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CiREAT MASS MEETING 



ON THE BATTLE GKOUND OF 



TIPPECANOE. 



60,000 Freemen in Conncil ! 



SPEECH OF 



GENEML J. WATSON WEBB. 

{From the ''''Courier and Enquirer''\ Octoher 14^A.) 



I thank you fellow-citizens, very sincerely, for this 
greeting — for this more than welcome. Not that I 
have the vanity to apply it to myself personally, be- 
cause I have done nothing to merit such a reception ; 
but I receive it as it is intended — a grateful tribute to 
the cause in which we are laboring, and to the tri. 
umph of which, I shall cheerfully, if need be, devote 
the remainder of my days. I feel that it is good to be 
here; but I also feel, that I want words to express tne 
emotions of my heart, at witnessing, and being a par- 
ticipator in, this great ovation to Liberty. It has been 
said, that the most beautiful and the most wonderful 
scenes which it is permitted man to behold, are, the 
tempest-tossed ocean and the rising of 
that glorious orb, which gives heat and light, 
and vitality to all the world ; and by his 
presence, certifies to man the existence of the Diety 
and His love to our race. But permit me to say, that 
there is in the scene now presented to my view, a 
sublimity and a moral grandeur, which far exceed 
anything which the imagination of the poet has con- 
ceived, or which the pencil of the painter can portray. 
I have witnessed the rising of the sun from the lofti- 
est peaks of the Alps; and m various passages across 
the Atlantic, I have seen the ocean in its calmest 
moods and when lashed into fury by the storm, obe- 
dient only to His will, in whose hands is the destiny 
of nations, and who alone, raises the whirlwind and 
directs the storm ; but never have I witnessed the 
moral sublime so perfectly delineated, as in this spon- 
taneous uprising of a whole people, to vindicate and 
secure to their children, the great inheritance of 'civil 
ind religious liberty, won by the valor and consecrat- 
Jd by the blood of their fathers. The greatest earth- 



quake in the natural world, sinks into insigni- 
ficance, when compared with this spontaneous 
uprising of a whole people, animated solely by the 
love of Liberty, and unalterably resolved to punish 
all those who have conspired against their constitu 
tional rights. 

When I look around upon this vast assemblage, 
and permit my mind to turn back upon the period 
when I first stood upon this far-famed batcle ground, 
and remember where it was then situated, and what 
was then the condition of the great North-West, I 
want language to express my wonder and astonish- 
ment. Thirty-six years ago, I was one of a Court Mar- 
tial ordered to assemble at Terre Haute; and thirty-five 
years ago, I constituted one of the garrison of Fort 
Dearborn, at Chicago. All west from this point, was 
then one vast wilderness, inhabited solely by the Red 
Man and a handful of soldiers, whose duty it was, to 
protect the scattered population of our frontier settle- 
ments. The nearest residence of a white inhabitant 
to our garrison, was at Fort Wayne, where we sent 
once a fortnight for our mail. Here, where we now 
stand, was thert the very confines of the white man's 
home ; and now west of this spot, in that then track- 
less wiHerness, are to be found the happy and pros- 
perous homes, of nearly five millions of Freemen. 
My old garrison, Chicago, then more than a hundred 
miles in advance of the most adventurous white 
man's home, now contains a population of more than 
a hundred thousand souls ; and un'.old villages and 
cities, and the most active and thriving farming pop- 
ulation on the face of the Globe, now dwell and pros- 
per, where so recently, the death-like silence of the 
wilderness, had never been broken by the busy 



>aJ '2'° 



hum of civilization. Only thirty-six years have 
passed since the period of which I speak. I then 
stood here in the vigor of youthful manhood. I stand 
before you to-day, having numbered but little over 
half a century of the years allotted to man — still in 
my prime and able as ever to do battle in the cause 
of Liberty — and yet I may lay claim among the mil- 
lions who inhabit the great North West, to be that 
mysterious person of whom everybody has heard, but 
who is so rarely seen — " the oldest inhabitant". 
When Rip Van Winkle awoke from his twenty 
year's sleep in the caverns of the Cats-kills, he knew 
not the facesof the neighbors with whom he sup- 
posed he had parted on the previous day ; and in like 
manner, when I wake as from my sleep of more than 
a third of a century, I look in vain for the old land- 
marks of my hunting grounds, and the familiar faces 
of companions of the hunt and the mess-room. 
All, all have been gathered to their rest ; but I 
find in their stead, millions of people, in whose 
stalwart forms and smiling faces, I perceive 
at once, the evidences of universal prosperity, 
ind a manly, fearless independence, which 
delights in honest labor and reaps its never-failing 
ewards. Your faces are all unknown to me ; but 
God has planted his image there ; and I know that in 
the heart of every man in this vast assemblage, there 
dwells a spirit of Liberty which will never suc- 
cumb to any power which seeks to undermine the free 
institutions bequeathed us by those who pledged "their 
lives, their liberties, and their sacred honor" in sup- 
port of freedom of thought, freedom of action, free- 
dom of speech, freedom of the Press, and Freedom for 
man. And yet I cannot help exclaiming, whence 
came this army of freedom ? 

Come ye from the sunny South ? No. Man there, is 
taught that labor belongs solely to bondsmen and to 
slaves — that it is beneath the dignity of freemen ; 
and of course, ye came not thence. But ye have 
come from the Free North, — offshoots of that 
noble band of Pilgrims who planted the Tree of 
Liberty on the Rock of Plymouth and the Banks of 
the Hudson, and watered its roots with their 
blood, freely spilt on the fields of Concord, of 
Lexington, and of Banker Hill, until its 
branches have overshadowed a vast Continent, 
and given dignity to labor and freedom and civil 
and religious liberty, to a mighty people. But you 
are not alone in this work ofcausing the wilderness 
to blossom as a rose. I perceive everywhere, stand- 
ing around and amid yon, cliildren of another clime, 
who have been driven from the despotisms of the old 
world, to find a home and freedom and prosperity in 
the land of Washingto.n, and under laws which 
have their foundations in the everlasting truths of 
revealed religion and the principle of equal rights to 
all who bear the image of our Maker. We welcome 
all such to a free and full participation in the bless- 
ings of our free institutions ; and may God in his in- 
finite goodness, teach them, one and all, that they 
can best exhibit their gratitude for the liberty and 
prosperity which they now enjoy, but which were not 
their birthright, by devoting all their energies, to the 



preservation of the glorious constitution which se 
cures to us the institutions in which they have been 
permitted so freely to participate. 
Men of the North- West — freemen of the soil— descen- 
dants of the Pilgrim Fathers; and ye who have proved 
your love of freedom by forsaking your Fader-land 
to dwell in this " the land of the free, and the home of 
the brave", — what is it that brings you here to-day? 
What is it that has brought together here, in the very 
orssence of the spirits of those^wbo laid down their 
lives in their country's service, such avast concourse 
of the bone and sinew of our land ? Need I reply? 
Does not the heart of every man leap to his tongue, 
ready to exclaim, " We come in the cause of Freedom 
" and to vindicate the Constitution'and the institu- 
" tions of the country, against those who would 
" trample both under foot, and establish in their stead 
" an odious oligarchy, the very existence of which 
* pre-supposes the presence of SLAVERY with aU 
" its attendant demoralization, in a region where 
" free white labor is now honored and respected, and 
" gives law and order, and peace and prosperity to the 
" land". Such, fellow-citizens, is the purpose of your 
assembling in council on this occasion; and would to 
God that I were more capable of placing vividly be- 
fore you, the momentous crisis at which we have 
arrived in our nation's history. But my vocation is 
to write and not to speak; and although I could not 
but obey the call to be with you to day, I well knew 
that I should find here, good soldiers and true, whose 
impassioned eloquence and matured wisdom, would 
abundantly compensate for all my deficiencies. 

When our fathers gravely determined to resist the 
aggressive acts of the Mother Country, and appeal to 
the God of battles for that redress which their rulers 
refused, the civilized world conceded the justice of 
their 'cause and the necessity of their ap 
peal. But great as their grievances were — 
oppressive as were the acts of their rulers 
— history will hereafter vindicate the truth 
of the deliberate declaration which I now utter in the 
presence of my God and of this vast multitude of 
Freemen, that according to the best of my judgment 
and belief, based upon a candid and careful ex- 
amination of the whole subject, resistance to 
the administration of the so-called Democra- 
tic party and its murderous and bloodstained 
acts of oppression towards our brethren of Kansas, 
is more imperatively demanded at our hands now, 
than was resistance to George the III and his min- 
ions by our patriot sires in 1775. In the whole cata- 
logue of grievances so vividly set forth by the immor- 
tal Jefferson in our Declaration of Independence, 
we find but a very faint foreshadowing of what has 
actually been practised by the existing Administra- 
tion at Washington, and for which, they were so elo- 
quently arraigned by the Liberty-loving Jefferson of 
the present day, (William H. Seward) in his admir- 
rable speech in the Senate of the United States in 
February last. No one charge did our fathers make 
against their oppressors, which we may not make 
with equal truth, against the President of the Uni- 
ted States and the miserable tools who have base- 



ly sold themselves to do the execrable work of the 
Slaveocracy of the land. And in addition, we can 
make out against them a record of blood, such as 
our fathers never dreamed of", and which would 
havp driven them to extremities, which we, having 
a source of redress in the Ballot-Box, cannot even 
impgine. But our fathers had no ballot-boxes, 
through which and to which, they could appeal; 
and therefore, they appealed to arms and to "the 
Supreme ruler of the Universe" lor that justice which 
their King withheld. But they gave us a more 
simple and effectual remedy for all our grievances, 
when they bequeathed to us the blessing of self- 
government, and gave us the ballot-box for its 
preservation. And the knowledge of this fact, has 
rendered us quiet and submissive under outrages 
to which they were strangers. Our remedy is in our 
ov\n hands; and they who bequeathed to us our 
Liberties, our tree institutions, and the noble charter 
by which they are guaranteed, inculcated the all im- 
portant duty of submission to the powers that be, until, 
such time as we have failed to secure a redress of griev- 
ances by an honest end intelligent exercise of the elec- 
tive franchise. We have thus submitted; and the hour 
is at hand for redress. The call for the gathering of 
Freemen, has gone forth ; and we are here to-day in 
obedience to that call. And in this vast assemblage, 
and the spirit which animates it, maybe distinctly 
read the hand-writing on the wall, which proclaimed 
to B.iLTHAZAR and his minions, that their hour had 
come. 

Fellow-Citizens, this is no party gathering. Party 
is the life-blood of a Republic, and I do not wish to 
see the day when there shall be no parties in our 
country. But there are periods in the history of 
nations, when all party lines and all personal 
differences, and all selfish considerations, are 
thrust aside as the idle wind which no man regard- 
eth, and give place to vital questions of principle 
upon which depend the very existence of Govern- 
ment itself. In monarchies and despotisms, the 
people have no remedy but in revolution and an 
appeal to the sword. But thank God and our Patriot 
fathers, we have a simpler and more certain remedy. 
We have both the right and the power, peaceably to 
redress ourselves and to vindicate our principles ; 
and that we may do so understandingly, and cheer 
each other on in the noble and patriotic work, and 
induce all lovers of freedom to join us, we are now 
assembled together in council, on ground consecrated 
to liberty by the blood of Patriots, freely poured out 
in defence of our common country. 

If there bejamong us any who, still clinging to party 
recollections, are anxiously looking for the merits of 
the pending strife between Slavery and Freedom, 
to them I would say in the spirit of kindness and of 
truth, that there is but one solitary question to be 
decided by the approaching Presidential contest ; and 
that is — "Shall the Institution of Slavery be restricted 
" to the line of 36° 3(y of North latitude as was 
" solemnly covenanted by our fathers thirty-six years 
" ago, or shall that blighting curse be extended into 
" the free territories of ihe United States, to the de- 



" moralization of our people, the dishonoring of free 
" labor, and the ultimate destruction of even the 
"semblance of Liberty and the principles of the 
" Constitution by which it is fostered ?" This I say, 
is the sole and only question to be determined in the 
coming Presidential contest ; and in the determin- 
ing of this all important matter, which is to affect 
the destinies of this great country through all future 
time, men are as nothing. You have been told that 
this is a war against the institution of Slavery, and 
the rights of our fellow-citizens of the Slave-holding 
States under the Constitution of the Union. But all 
this is false, and known to be false by those who make 
the charge. We war not against Slavery, but against its 
extension into territory now free; and if I know my- 
self, I would sooner sever this right arm from my 
body, than stand before you this day, advocating any, 
the slightest interference with the purely local in- 
stitution of Slavery where it rightfully exists. For 
twenty-nine consecutive years, I have stood before 
the public the only responsible editor.of one of the 
leading journals of the United States ; and during 
twenty-seven years of that time, the South have 
never had a more determined or zealous advocate for 
all their constitutional rights. And it is my pride, as 
it is my duty to declare, that now and hereafter, they 
will always find in me, in my Press, and in my ac- 
complished associates, the same devotion to their 
constitutional rights, which has heretofore called 
forth their admiration and applause. But when 
Slavery becomes aggressive — when its advocates 
cease to be content with its being a local institution 
and with the protection which the Constitution gives 
it, and aim to render it national; when the Slareocracy 
openly repudiate the most solemn compacts, and 
glorying in their dishonor, demand that it shall be 
extended into territory now free, by the direct legis- 
lation of Congress ; when they shamefully boast of 
their violation of plighted faith,and impudently threat 
en to "conquer" the freemen of the North and com- 
pel their submission; when they proclaim that 
Slavery is a blessing and not a curse, as they have 
always admitted in times past ; when they repudiate 
the sentiments of Washington and Jefferson, and 
ridicule the principles of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, and denounce it as " a Rhetorical Flor- 
ish"; and an abstraction ; and when they 
impudently threaten disunion if the North 
will not tamely submit to their impudent 
and arrogant demands — it becomes the duty of every 
honest citizen to rally in defence of Freedom, and 
sternly to decree, that the institution of Slavery shall 
not be exten led north of the Compromise line of 
1820. In so doing, we shall not lose sight of our 
duty to our Southern brethren and of the Constitu- 
tion ; and palsied be the tongue that would utter 
one word in derogation of either. 

That Slavery is a curse to the master and to the 
country where it exists, rather than to the race held 
in bondage, all must admit ; and I cheerfully admit, 
too, that the only remedy yet devised (emancipa- 
tion) is worse than the disease. Let no man 
therefore, taunt our Southern brethren with this 



/ 



\ 



plague-spot, or seek to ^intermeddle with an institu. 
tion, the existence of which among them, is their 
misfortune and not their fault. They are entitled to 
our sympathy and condolence ; and I speak advised- 
ly when I say, that they have it. The whole North, 
with a few miserable exceptions, commiserate the 
misfortune of those who are born with this 
curse in their midst, and only take exception to 
the impudence and the arrogance which un- 
blushingly seeks to extend it in violation 
of the most sacred pledges and contracts which can 
be made between men. Who is there among you, 
if he have a neighbor or relative, afflicted with some 
horrid and disgusting disease, will not give to the 
afflicied, his warmest sympathy and his deepest 
commisseration ? He will, if necessary, cheerfully 
divide with him his purse, and do all that it is in the 
power of man to do to ameliorate his condition ; but 
when the afflicted neighbor, asks him to share his 
disease, and begs to be permitted to communicate 
it to his family, without thereby in any way re- 
lieving himself, will he not draw back and reject 
with horror the selfish and impudent proposition? 
And so it is with Slavery. We commisserate those, 
who in the Providence of God, are afflicted with 
this moral leprosy, and deeply sympathise with 
them in their misfortunes, and will abstain from 
interfering, or upbrading them with their Plague-spot ; 
we will faithfully discharge towards them all our 
constitutional obligations, and do all in our power to 
mitigate their sufferings from this blighting curse. 
But when they ask us to permit its extension into 
Territory which God and man have alike devoted 
to freedom, and thereby destroy forever, the respecta- 
bility of free labor amid unborn millions ; and all 
to enable a class at the South to "put money in their 
purse," our duty to ourselves and to our posterity — to 
freedom, to humanity, to our christian faith, and to 
God himself— demands at our hands a decided re- 
pudiation of the impudent proposition. That repu- 
diation ha§ gone forth on the wings of the wind, and 
has been responded to from every hamlet in the occu- 
pancy of honest and intelligent Freemen; and we are 
assembled here this day, to record our approbation of 
the Decree. But the Slaveocracy boast, that they 
will force upon the Freemen of the North, the curse 
under which they labor— that they will " conquer " 
the Free Territory of Kinsas from the men of the 
North— that their peculiar institution, shall be restor- 
ed in the places whence it has been driven by the 
laws of God and man — and that, ere long the Slave- 
owner of Georgia, will be at liberty to call the roll of 
his human chattels within the shadow of the great 
monument raised to Freedom on Bunker Hill. Shall 
this be? Will the men of the North, among whom 
labor is honorable as instituted by God himself when 
man first fell from his high Estate, bow their necks 
in tame submission to a mere handful of arrogant 
mortals, so utterly deficient in the qualities ne- 
cessary to make good their boasts, that the 
Freemen of this region alone, where a quarter of 
a century ago the voice of the white man was 
rarely heard, could drive them all into the ocean 



as easily as in the coming political struggle, 
they can if they will, rescue forever the Free Soil 
of our country from the curse which threatens it? No, 
never, never, never. I doubt not that a majority of 
this vast assemblage, can with me, boast of their 
descent from those who nobly won for themselves 
and for their posterity forever, the civil and religious 
liberty we enjoy ; and I trust in God, that the day is 
far distant, when any of us can be unmindful of our 
duty in a crisis like the present. But let us not be 
unheedful of the signs of the times. Threats have 
been followed by acts ; and those who have under- 
taken the herculean task of " conquering " the far 
North, are at this very moment making rapid strides 
towards the achievement of their purpose, through 
the weakness, the imbecility, and the treachery of 
Northern demagogues, who have sold their birthright 
for a mess of pottage, and now seek to consummate 
the infamous bargain. 

Our enemies will deny this; but look at Kansas 
and the scenes of outrage, robbery, rapine and 
murder, which have been perpetrated there, during 
the last year, under the asgis of the Stars and 
Stripes, and with the full sanction of the officers 
of the General Government, including the Execu- 
tive himself — scenes which would have demanded 
an appeal to arms long since, if the valor and the 
wisdom of our Revolutionary fathers,had not provided 
for us the more peaceable remedy of the Ballot- 
Box. Cunning and chicanery, backed by the power 
of a venal and corrupt Executive, have attempted 
to cover up with color of Law, their robberies and 
murders, and their driving away from the Free soil 
of Kansas, the Freemen, who, in the exercise of 
their Constitutional rights, had there made their 
homes, and were rapidly building up institutions con- 
secrated to Freedom. But the intelligence of the peo- 
ple — of the Freemen of the great North— cannot be thus 
imposed upon. What are the facts of the case which 
now so imperatively addresses itself to the hearts and 
the consciences of Freemen, and demands at their 
hands the sacrifice of all minor questions, that by a 
united struggle, they may forever secure to the Free 
North, exemption from the curse which an all-wise 
Providence has inflicted upon our less fortunate 
brethren of the South ? Let History tell the tale ; 
and let us, one and all, clearly understand the great 
issue which we are Jibout to determine for all 
time. 

In pursuance of that provision of the Constitution 
which declares that Congress may admit into the 
Union new States, the Territory of Missouri framed 
a State Constitution in 1819, and at the following 
session of Congress, asked admission into the Union 
as a Slave State. The Statesmen and Patriots of 
the North, with one voice, said, — "No, not as a Slave 
' State. We have already sufficient of Slavery repre- 
' sentation in Congress ; and the Free Territories 
' of the North, shall never be polluted with 
' the blighting and demoralizing curse. That 
' fairest portion of our Continent, is destined to be 
' the future home of our children and their children's 
* children, and of the oppressed of Europe, wh'-' 



V 



' loving freedom, may desire to find here an asylum 
' from the tyranny and oppression of the old world. 
' We are ready to welcome Missouri into our Union, 
' but not with the bar sinister of Slavery, emblazoned 
' upon her escutcheon". At this the handful of slave- 
holders at the South, blus'^ered and bullied, and 
threatened a dissolution of the Federal Union. We 
were an infant nation then, and the bonds of the 
Union had not been cemented by the inseparable 
interests whicli now make us one people. Our fa- 
thers loved their Southern brethern with an affection 
as pure as th.it which now burns in every patriot 
bosom of the North ; and what is more to the pur- 
pose, they not only loved the Union, but they had 
already determined that it should never he dissolved. 
The South too, at that time, loved the Union, 
because their Patriots of the Revolution, who 
stood side by side with our fathers on the battle- 
grounds of freedom, were still among them and 
counciled peace and conciliation. " There were 
Giants in those days". Wkbster, Clay, Calhoun, 
Kins, Lowndes, Pinckney, and their compeers, had 
all come upon the stage of life, mighty in council 
and in debate, and still mightier in purpose, because 
they could sit at the feet of the Gamaliels of the 
Revolution, and receive instruction for those who 
battled for, and founded our Republic Prompted 
by the purest patriotism, and guided by the same spi- 
rit of compromise and concession which presided 
over the framing of our Constitution, they 
resolved that the unforiunate dissensions which 
threatened the very existence of our Govern- 
ment, should forever be allayed, by a com- 
promise whicli should be alike just to all, and 
to which all could assent without dishonor. It 
was therefore, resolved by the People's Represen- 
tatives in the House, and by the Representatives of 
the States in the Senate, and by the Executive of the 
Nation — James Mo^fROE, of Virginia, a soldier and 
statesman of the Revolution, and himself a Slave 
holder — and approved byJuFFERsoK and Madison and 
the people of the United States, that Missouri should 
be admittel into the Union as a sovereign State with 
Slavery inscribed upon her banner, upon the express 
an:l sole condition, and none other, that thereafter, 
Slavery should FOREVER be excluded from all the 
territory of the Uiaon lying north of 36°30'of north lat- 
itude. And for the sacred maintenance of this compact, 
the South and the North, solemnly pledged their faith 
one to th3 other, and caused the pledge thus solemn- 
ly given, to constitute a part of the compact itself. 

Then the note of discord ceased ; the cry of 
disunion was heard no more ; peace and happiness 
prevailed throughout the land ; and we were indeed 
one people. But time rolled on. The patriots who 
made, and the sages who sanctioned the compromise 
of 1820, one by one, fell into their graves. Jeffer- 
son andMADisoN, Monroe and Pinckney, Lowndes 
and Lee, Clay and Calhoun, all of whom had sanc- 
tioned this great work and represented therein, and 
plighted thereto, the honor and the good faith of the 
South ; and the giant Webster and the pure-hearted 
King, and the host of good men who had united in 



this great and good work — all, all were in 
their graves ; when thirty-four years after 
its inauguration, the Slaveocracy of the pre- 
sent day, regardless of their plighted faith and 
of their "sacred honors", aided by a few rene- 
gade politicians from the North, shamefully and 
infamously, repudiated and repealed the sacred 
compromise of our fathers, and gave up to Slavery 
and to Slavery extension, not only Kansas, but every 
foot of Free territory which had been so solemnly 
consecrated to freedom ! 

Then the Sons of Freedom at the North, buckled 
on theii armor and marshaled their legions for the 
fight, in defence of free labor, and free soil and free- 
men, and against that Slave-power which had basely 
sacrificed its plighted faith on the altar of mammon. 
Then Freemen rushed into the newly organized 
Territory of Kansas, not only to make for themselves 
comfortable homes, but by their presence, to 
rescue the Free soil of that fair region from 
the curse of Slavery, and preserve it for the 
occupancy of Freemen. But the Slave power, 
backed by an unprincipled and unscrupulous Execu- 
tive, had determined that Kansas should be a Slave- 
State ; and therefore, in defiance of the organic law 
of the country, armed bands of Missourians marched 
into the Territory on election day, drove the friends 
of free soil from the Polls or overwhelmed them by 
their votes, and elected to the Legis'ature supple 
tools of their own. The men thus elected by a 
band of armed Ruffians from Missouri, called them- 
selves the Legislature of the Territory of Kansas ! 
and Franklin Pierce, the Executive of the 
United States, who has sold himself, body and soul, to 
the Slave power, and unblushingly announced him- 
self ready to do their bidding in all things, shameful- 
ly recognized this spurious bof^y, and has used the ar- 
my and the civil power of the Union, to enforce their 
odious enactments — enactments falsely dignified 
with the name of Laws, and which are a'~'solutely dis- 
graceful to our country and even to the nge in which 
ve live — -enactments which would ensure resistance 
and revolution, even in despotic Russia, and to which 
no subject of the Sultan would for a moment sub- 
mit. By these so-called Laws— approved by the 
Democratic Party and enforced with the bayonet by 
a weak and wicked Executive — to proclaim aloud 
the principles of the Declaration of Independence, 
or to read that noble document within the Territory 
of Kansas, is declared to be a felony, punishable 
with incarceration in the State Prison for a period 
of five years ! while to advocate the exclusion of 
Slavery from the Free Soil of Kansas, is made a 
crime punishable with Death ! ! And to render 
morally certain the adoption of a Constitution which 
shall render Kansas a Slave State forever, no person 
is permitted to exercise the elective franchise 
who will not swear that he is in favor of the institu- 
tion of Slavery in Kansas and the Laws enacted for 
its support. In proof of this declaration, I read from 
the enactments to which I refer. 

Section 4 of the Act entitled SLAVES, punishes 
with DEATH any person convicted of decoying or 



carrying away a Slave from the heretofore Free Ter- 
ritory of Kansas. But not content with this extraor- 
dinary enactment, they also make punishable with 
DEATH, the act of carrying away a Slave from Vir- 
ginia or Kentucky ; while the States from which the 
Slave is carried away, never dreamed of punishing 
the offender with anything more than imprisonment ! 
I quote from the Laws : 

Sec. 6. If any person shall entice, decoy or carry 
away out of any State or other Territory of the Uni- 
ted States any slave belonging to ano'ther, with in- 
tent to procure or effect the freedom of such slave, 
or to deprive the owner thereof of the services oi such 
slave, and shall bring such slave into this Territory, 
he shall be adjudged guilty of grand larceny, in the 
same manner as if such slave had been enticed, de 
coyed or carried away out of this Territory, and in 
such case the larceny may be charged to have been 
committed in any county of this Territory, into or 
through which such slave shall have been brought by 
suchpeison. and on conviction thereof the person of- 
fending SHALL SUFFER DEATH, or be imprison- 
ed at hard labor for 7iot less than ten years. 

So much for the character of the Slavery establish- 
ed in the free territory of Kansas, by a set of men 
calling themselves a Legislature for that Territory, 
but who notoriously owe their election to a set of 
Rufhaiis living in the State of Missouri. I quote 
again from the same Law : 

Sec. II. If any person'print, write, i/i(ro<iMcg into, 
publish or circulate, or cause to be brought into, 
printed, written, published, or circulated, or shall 
knowingly aid or assist in bringing into, printing, 
publishing, or circulating within this Territory, any 
book, paper, paini)hlet, magazine, handbill or circu- 
lar, containing any statements, arguments, opinions, 
sentiment, doctrines, advice, or innuciido, calculated 
to produce a disorderly, dangerous, or rebellious dis- 
affection among the slaves in this Territory, or to 
induce such slaves to escape from the service" of their 
masters, or to resist their authority, he shall be 
guilty of felony, and be punished by imprisonment 
and hard labor for a term of not less than five years. 

Now, fellow-citizens, the Declaration of In- 
dependence declares that all men "are born 
FKEK and equal"— a "sentiment" which ac- 
cording to this enactment, is calculated to 
produce "disaffection" among the slaves of Kansas; 
and therefore, to read that document as is customa- 
ry on the Anniversary of our Independence, or to in- 
troduce it into the Territory, is a crime punishable 
with imprisonment with a ball and chain attached 
to his leg for not less than five years ! Henry Clay 
said in his letter to the citizens of New Orleans :— 
"Slavery is a piratical war against the rights of 
man." He also said -.—'-No earthly power could in- 
duce me In vote for the introduction of Slavery where 
it had not before existed, either South or North of 
the Missouri Compromise tin."— neither in Kansas 
nor Ncio Mexico. And for making such declaration 
in the Territory of Kansas, or for writing it to a friend 
residing there, or for circulating the Declaration of 
Independence there, he would, were he living and 
within the clutches of the Pro-Slavery authorities 
of Kansas, be liable to five year's imprisonment, with- 
out any option on the part of the Court to lessen his 
term of bondage ! 

Let us now see what would be the fate of any here 



present, who dares to assert that it is not right to hold 
slaves in Kansas, or who ?hall disapprove of the 
repeal of the Missouri Compromise, or shall presume 
to send into Kansas a newspaper inculcating such 
doctrines : 

Sec. 12. If any free person, by speaking or by 
writing, assert, or maintain that persons have not 
the right to hold slaves in this Territory, or shall 
introduce into this Territory, print, publish, write, 
circulate, or cause to be introduced mto this Terri- 
tory, written, printed, published or circulated in this 
Territory, any book, paper, magazine, pamphlet, or 
circular containing aray denial of the right of per- 
sons to hold slaves in this Territory, such person 
shall be deemed guilty of felony, and punished by 
imprisonment at hard labor for a term of not less 
than two years. 

There fellow-citizens, what say you to this gag 
upon the liberty of speech and of the Press ? If the 
freeman who left this vicinity a year ago to make 
for himself a home in the free Territory of Kansas> 
as it was his right to do under the Laws of the 
United States, shall venture in that home, to "assert 
or maintain" the blessings of freedom — or if I, or any 
person editing a free Press, presume to express my 
honest convictions in regard to Slavery through that 
Press, the inhabitant of Kansas who ventures to take 
such paper, or permits his neighbor to see it, is de 
clared to be a Felon ; and the court before whom he 
is tried, has no discretion but to sentence him to two 
years^ imprisonment at hard labor. And all this is 
done in the sacred name of Liberty, with the con 
nivance of the Executive of the United States, 
under the direction ot the Slave Power of the South' 
and by virtue of what are called Laws, enacted by a 
Legislature proved to have been elected by the in 
habitants of the State of Missouri. A'd to insure 
the conviction of all persons offending in any way 
against this most tyrannical slave code, it is provided 
as follows : 

Sec 13. No person who is conscientiously oppos- 
ed to holding slaves, or who does not admit the right 
to hold slaves in this Territory, shall sit- as a juror 
on the trial of any prosecution for any violation of 
any of the sections of this act. 

Having thus shown that to speak or w.ite 
against Slavery in Kansas, is a crime punishable 
with imprisonment of from two to five years 
at hard labor, let us now turn to the act in rela- 
tion to criminals, and there learn the nature of 
the punishment for reading or circulating in the 
Free Territory of Kansas in the nineteenth century, 
the Declaration of Independence, or the writings 
of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Clay, and 
their fellow-patriots ; — bearing in mind always, 
that none but the open advocates of Slavery and 
Slavery-extension, are permitted to sit as Jurors ; 
and that on conviction by such packed Jury, the Court 
has no discretion but to sentence the party convicted, 
to two or five years' imprisonment at hard labor. 
Five years for circulating the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, and two years for reading or circulating an 
independent newspaper, or for questioning the right 
ful existence of Slavery in the Free Territory ot 
Kansas, from which it was forever excluded by the 
Comproiflise of 1820. Listen to what imprisonment 



at hard labor is, without power anywhere, to modify 
or ameliorate it : 

Sec. 2. Every person who may be sentenced by any 
court of competent jurisdiction, under any law in 
force within this Territory, to punishment by con- 
finement and hard labor, shall be deemed a convict, 
and shall immediately, under the charge of the keep- 
er of such jail or public prison, or under the charge of 
such person as the keeper of such jail or public 
prison may select, be put to hard labor, as in the first 
section of this act specified; and such ke per or other 
person, having charge of such convict, shall cause 
such convict, whde engaged at such labor, to be 
securely confined by a chain six feet in length, of 
not less than four-sixteenths nor more than three- 
eighths of an inch links, with a round ball of iron, 
of not less than four nor more than six inches in 
diameter, attached, which chain shall be securely 
fastened to the ankle of such convict with a strong 
lock and key ; and such keeper or other person, hav 
ing charge oT such convict, may, if nee :ssary, confine 
such convict, while so engaged in hard labor, by 
o^AcTcAams or other means in his discretion, so as 
to keep such convict secure and prevent his escape; 
and when there shall be two or more convicts under 
the charge of such keeper, or other person, such 
convicts shall be fastened together by strong chains, 
with strong locks and keys, during the time such 
convicts shall be engaged in hard labor without the 
walls of any jail or prison. 

Such fellow-citizens, are some of the odious enact- 
ments put forth as Laws, by a set of men claiming to 
be a Legislature for Kansas, but who are proved by a 
Cominittee of Congress, to h ive been elected by a 
band of Ruffians living in the State of Missouri. 
And these enactments the Freemen of Kansas have 
not only been called upon to respect and obey ; but 
when, as it was their duty to God and man to do, 
they refused obedience to mere edicts which had not 
even the color of law to command the respect of the 
oeoplfi, the Executive of the United States has em- 
p'oyed and countenmced the very Gorder Ruffians who 
eltcted this so-called Legislature, to drive from the 
Tpr-itory and jhoot down and murder every Ameri- 
can titizen who had the manhood to resist the most 
feartu' tyraimy that was ever attempted to be enforced 
upo I ai intelligent peo;)le. Resistance to tyranny, is, 
a* all tines and in all places, the most imperative 
duty of Freemen ; but it was rendered still more 
i:np'?rati'ely the duty of our brethren in Kansas to 
resist, wlat are falsely denominated the Laws of 
thtt Territory; because the same pretended Legisla- 
ture whicli enacted those Laws, as they are called, 
not only adopted the entire code of Mis- 
souri as the Laws of Kansas, but passed 
test acts, the object of which was to disfranchise 
thK3 Ireeineu of that Territory, and forever prevent 
the repeal ol the abominable laws which I have 
cited. By thea> test acts, no man is permitted to 
hold a seat in tie Legislature nf Kansas, until he 
has first taken .i 'olemn oath ''to support the pro- 
visions of an Act to organize the Territories of 
Nebraska and Kans;,"; or in otl^^r words, until he 
has soleuirdy sworn r, stand by, and sustain the 
repeal of the Missouri 'ompromise ! And what is 
still more significant and -ippressive, no man is per. 
mitted to e.xercise the eective Franchise, unless 
he will first svear to susim that most infamous 



proceeding. I read to you from these odious Test 
Acts : 

Sec. 11. ♦ • Andprovided further, That if any 
person offering to vote shall be challenged and re- 
quired to take an oath or affirmation, to be adminis- 
tered by one of the judges of the election, that he 
will sustain the provisions of the above recited acts 
of Congress, and of the act entitled "An act to organ- 
ize the Territories of Nebraska and Kansas", ap- 
proved May 30, 1854, and shall refuse to take f^uch 
oath or affirmation, the vote of such person shall be 
rejected. 

Sec. 12. Every person possessing the qualification 
of a vote, as hereinabove prescribed, a:>d who shall 
have resided in this Territory thirty days prior to the 
election, at which he may offer himself as a candi- 
date, shall be eligible as a delegate to the House of 
Representatives of the United States, to either branch 
of the legislative assembly, and to all other offices in 
this Territory, not otherwise especi;illy provided for : 
provided, however, that each member of the legislative 
assembly, and every officer elected or appointed to of- 
fice under the laws ,jf this Territory, shall, in addition 
to the oath or affirmation specially provided to be taken 
by such officer, take an oath or affirmation to support 
the Constituti'^n of the United States, the provisions 
of an act entitled " An act respecting fugitives from 
justice and persons escaping from the service of their 
masters," approved February 12, 1793; and of an act 
to amend and supplementary to said last mentioned 
act, approved September 18, 1850; and of an act 
entitled ".An Ac' to organise the Territories oj 
Nebraska and Kansas," approved May 30, 1854. 

Sec. 13 No person who is conscientiously opposed 
to the holding slaves, or tvho does not admit the 
right to hold slaves in this Territory, shall be a 
juror in any cause in which the right to hoM any 
person in Slavery is involved, nor in any cause in 
which any injury done to or committed by any slave 
is in issue, nor in any criminal proceeding for the 
violation of any law, enacted for the protection, of 
slave properly, and for the punishment of crimes 
committed against the right to such property. 

In like manner, no person may practise Law in the 
Territory of Kansas, who will not first swear that 
he' will sustain and support the repeal of the Missouri 
Compromise ! 

Fellow-citizens, I feel that it is somewhat tedious 
thus to examine into the character of the so called 
Laws of Kmsas, which the President of the United 
States, in obedience to the Slave power, is now 
enforcing with the army of the Union, in violation 
of every principle for which our fathers fought, and 
upon which our free institutions are based. But I 
stand here to address myself to your reason, and not 
to please your ears with well turned periods, 
and that eloquence which frequently excites 
when it does not convince. I stand here the 
advocate of right ; and to maintain and 
justify the Freemen of Kansas in their resistance 
now and hereafter, to every jot and tittle of the so- 
called Laws of Kansas, enacted by a Legislature not 
elected by themselves, but by the people of Missouri. 
The tyrannical character of those Laws, not only 
justifies, hnt demands, resistance from Freemen; and 
when in addition, they have been proved to emanate 
from a body of men not elected by the people of Kan- 
sas, and certain provisions which disfranchise 
Freemen from taking any part in their repeal — to 
have acquiesced in them, would have been a crime 



8 



against Liberty, and have merited the condemnation 
of the whole American people. I stand here, feJlow- 
citizens, to demand at your hands, justice for our breth- 
ren of Kansas, and it is only by demonstrating to you 
the extent of their grievances, that I can expect at the 
ballot-boxes in November, that united action against 
their oppressors, wrhich can alone relieve them from 
the tyranny which they are suffering, and avert from 
our beloved country, the horrors of a widely extended 
civil war. I have placed before you faithfully, and as 
concisely as possible, a few only, of the so called 
Laws of Kansas, which the Freemen of that Terri- 
tory have so manfully resisted; and which are now 
bein^ enforced by the Executive of the Union, with 
the Army of the United States and the very Border 
Ruffians who have been the authors of all the murders 
and outrages perpetrated upon the defenceless people 
of Kansas in obedience to the Slaveocracy of the 
land. 

Briefly, then, fellow-citizens, the case stands thus : 
Thirty-six years ago our fathers entered into a 
solemn compact with the Slave power, by which it 
was agreed, that Missouri should be admitted into the 
sisterhood of sovereign and independent States, with 
Slavery in her Constitution, on the express condition, 
that in consideration of her being so admitted, 
SLAVERY or involuntary servitude, should for- 
ever be excluded from all the territory of the 
Union lying North of 36° 30' of north latitude. 
Calhoun and Clay, and Pinckney and Lowndes 
and Lee, were the immediate representatives 
of the South in this solemn compact, made 
for the preservation of the Constitution itself ; 
and Jefferson, Madison and Monroe, gave it their 
hearty approval, and hailed it as the harbinger of 
peace to a distracted country, and as securing to 
freedom and to free labor forever, the fertile region 
of the North West. When all these Patriots and 
their co-laborers at the North, had sunk into the 
grave— passed " to that bourne whence no traveller 
returns" — the Slaveocracy of the present day, in 
disregard of their plighted faith and in viola- 
tion of every sentiment of honor and honesty, 
and aided by a handful of reckless . and unprin- 
cipled Northern Demagogues, shamefully repealed 
the solemn compact of 1820 ; and by the Kansas- 
Nebraska act of 1854, actually legislated Slavery 
into the free territory of Kansas and robbed freedom 
of its portion of a compact, from which the Slave- 
ocracy had already reaped all the fruit it was capable 
of yielding. But in perpetrating this gigantic fraud, 
in violation of the plighted faith of the nation, and 
against honor and honesty, the conspirators against 
Northern rights. Southern honor and national jus- 
tice, were compelled to hold forth to the cheated and 
insulted freedom of the North, the plea, at least, that 
the people of the newly created Territory, should be 
permitted to determine for themselves the future 
character of their political institutions, by a free ex- 
ercise of the elective franchise through the Ballot- 
box. But the plea was as false, as they themselves 
had been false to their plighted iaith and to every 
sentiment of honor and honesty. They knew at the 



time, that they had bribed the Executive power of 
the nation, to become their miserable tool in this deep 
laid scheme of Slavery-Extension, and that he would 
render absolutely void and of no effect, the pretended 
submission of the question of Slavery to the free will 
of the people of Kansas. They knew that Frank- 
lin Pierce and his co-laborers in the service of their 
Southern masters, would wield the Executive 
power of the nation against the interests 
and the Constitutional rights of freedom. 
And most faithfully has he executed his 
part of this dark and most iniquitous bargain. He 
promptly placed the Territory of Kansas into the 
hands of those who had already doomed that fair 
land to the blighting curse of Slavery ; and when the 
freemen of the North came up to the rescue, and 
sought through the Ballot-Boxes, the preservation 
of the free soil of Kansas from the lash of the Ne- 
gro-Driver and his reckless master, behold their 
trained bands, armed with Bowie-knives and Rifles, 
marching from Missouri into the newly acquired 
Territory, and with the connivance of the Execu- 
tive of this great Republic, driving her citizens from 
the Polls and electing tools of their own, to consti- 
tute a Legislature for the government of Kansas ! 
That Legislature, thus elected by men living in 
Missouri — as has been proved and solemnly proclaim- 
ed to the American People and to the world, by the 
House of Representatives of the United States — 
passed the infamous Laws to which I have called 
your attention ; and then, to prevent the possibility 
of their repeal, they also enacted, that no person 
who would not swear to support and sustain 
the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, should 
be entitled to a seat in any future L?gislature ; 
and that every citizen of Kansas who would not take 
a similar oath of allegiance to the slave power, 
should be forever disfranchished ! It is said th«t 
when Lycurgus desired to perpetuate the laws 
of Sparta, he persuaded the people to swear oledi- 
ence to them until his return ; and then depirted 
from among them and put an end to his exis.ence. 
But the armed Ruffians from Missouri, knew eo such 
disinterested devotion to their cause. They jecured 
themselves against a repeal of their iniquitousand in- 
famous enactments, by test oaths and the disfran- 
chisement of all who loved freedom ; and then re- 
turned to their homes, only to make a new inroad 
upon hapless Kansas, and enforce with the rifle and 
the bowie-knife, the tyrannical laws they had enacted. 
In that new inroad upon the defenceless reople of 
Kansas, they had the connivance and th« tacit ap- 
proval, of a weak and venal Executive; and of his 
representatives, as reckless and even more wicked 
than their miserable master. Witl his and their 
sanction and connivance, armed b!"ids of unprinci- 
pled Missouri robbers, swept -"ver the ill-fated 
plains of Kansas ;, and robbery rape, murder, and 
the torch of the incendiary, ev-rywhere marked the 
devastating track of the charp^teristic agents of that 
reckless and unprincipled h^^ of slaveholders, who 
commenced their foray up"! freedom by a bold and 
shameful repudiation of lynor and honesty, and the 



9 



plighted faith of the nation. Sustained in their fiend- 
ish work by the Federal Executive, and backed by 
a venal Judiciary and the Army, freedom has 
been temporarily crushed in Kansas, because her 
votaries have either been murdered or driven from her 
soil. And now, behold the miseraiile tool of that Ex- 
ecutive, who is himself the pliant tool of the Slave 
power, calls upon the People of Kansas, to assemble 
at the Pells on Monday next, and go through (he farce 
of electing a Delegate to Congress, and a Legislature 
in which none but a sworn friend of Slavery may take 
a seat, and the members of which, can only be voted 
for by white Slaves willing to swoar before God and 
man, that they approve of, and wiil support the re- 
peal of the Missouri Compromise ! 

Such, fellow-citizens, is the simple narrative of the 
facts in relation to the outrages upon Liberty in Kan- 
saSi — perpetrated m your name and by your servants — 
and which you are called upon to endorse in the ap- 
proaching Presidential contest. 

And I now ask of you freemen of this great North- 
west — men of Indiana, of Illinois, and of Wis- 
•consin, now befora me — I ask of you one and 
all, whether there has ever been proclaimed in 
any" civilized country on the face of the globe, sucli 
infamous enactments against the liberties of man ? 
And when we bear in mind that the wretches who 
passed these enactments— Laws they never were, — 
were elected by the Bouler Rutfians of Missouri to 
legislate for the Fice P. ople of Kansas, is it to be 
wondered at, that those patriots, breathing the air of 
freedom, and nurtured in the principle of our Revolu- 
tion, have refused obedience to the so-called laws 
of this spurious and truly infamous body? Nay, 
would they not have been disgraced in the estima- 
tion of every man within the sound of 
my voice, and of every friend of civil 
and religious liberty throughout the world, if 
they had tamely yielded themselves the pliant 
instruments of such iniquitous legislation ? And 
because they have refused such obedience to 
tyranny— because being fre?, they have asserted 
and maintained the rights of freemen — they have 
been shot down in cold blood, murdered in the public 
highways and in their beds, and had their dwellings 
burnt over their heads ; and to complete their mise- 
ry, have been doomed to see their wives and daugh- 
ters ravished by the fiends in human form, who pro- 
claim that their mission is "the extension of Slavery 
' over the free soil of Kansas, and the expulsion 
' therefrom, of every damned Yankee and Abolition- 
' ist who has dared to violate the Laws of the Terri- 
' tory by preaching in favor of Free soil, in defiance 
' of their enactment punishing the offence with im- 
' prisonment and death". Aye, fellow citizens, I 
assert on my responsibility as a man and a 
Christian, that there have been more murders, 
jobberies, and rapes, committed by the minions 
of Pro-Slavery on the free soil of Kansas dur- 
ing the last eighteen months — and that too, with 
the connivance, both direct and indirect, of the 
Executive of the Nation and the Democratic 
Party — than were committed by the minions of George 



the Third and his soldiery in these colonies, from 
1774 till the close of our Revolutionary struggle. 
Yes, the sufferings of the free people of Kansas from 
the hands of the brutal agents of the Slave power, 
during eighteen months, and that, too, with the con- 
nivance of the President of the United States, 
exceed — very far exceed — all the suffering, oppres- 
sion and outrages, which forced our fathers to 
take up arms against their Sovereign, and led to the 
Independence of the United States! And yet there 
has been no revolution — no driving from power and 
from his Presidential seat at Washington, the time- 
serving Executive who has countenanced these outra- 
ges on law, justice, and right — no appeal to arms by 
the people of the United States. A.ndwhyT Because 
we love and cherish our Constitution and have un 
abated reliance in the omnipotence of the Ballot-Box. 
We are a law-abiding people; and we cherish above 
all things, the Constitution and its provisions for the 
redress of grievances. And it is for the purpose of 
securing that redress through the Ballot-Boxes in the 
approaching Presidential Election, that we are now 
assembled here, peaceably to take council one of 
another, how we may best and most certainly, arouse 
the people to the vinlication of their liberties against 
those who have so shamefully trampled upon every 
thing we hold most sacred. Our Hearts bleed for 
the suflerings of our fellow- citizens of Kansas ; and 
our blood boils with indignation and the desire to 
ayenge their wrongs, when we think upon what they 
have suffered, and what they are destined still to 
suffer, before they will be permitted to live in safety, 
surrounded by free institutions in the land of the free. 
But I know that we have all of us resolved — firmly 
and unalterably resolved — and I desire to proclaim it 
here as I did from the National Convention of the 
Republican Party at Philadelphia ; that even if we 
should be struck down in our appeal to the Ballot- 
Boxes, and cheated out of that Constitutional mode 
of redress by the employment of the People's money 
and the People's servants, to vote down the honest 
yeomanry of the country for the benefit of the 
Slave Power ; — I say we are all resolved, that even 
in such a contingency, the Free People of Kansas 
shall never be subdued by the Border Ruffians of 
Missouri, backed by the Federal authority, into 
obedience to the infamous enactments of a so-called 
Legislature of Kansas, elected by the People of 
another State. 

We revere the Constitution, and we will obey and 
maintain the Laws — be they good or bad; and we 
will if needs be, freely shed our blood in preserving to 
our Southern brethren al I their vested rights in relation 
to Slavery where it now exists ; but we will never 
stand tamely by, and see our brethren in Kansas, 
forced to obey the enactments of a band of Ruffians, 
in whose election they were not permitted to take 
part, and which punish with imprisonment and death, 
freedom of speech and the avowal of attachment to 
the principles of the Declaration of Independence. 
No, never, never, never ; and I now repeat what I 
said in the National Convention assembled in 
Philadelphia, and which has been so basely 



10 



/ 



perverted for the basest of Party purposes. I 
then said and I now repeat, that "we shall appeal 
" to the Ballot-Box and seek by the election 
" of a Republican President, to arrest the civil war 
" now raging in Kansas. And if we fail in this' 
" what then ? Will we consent to see our free-soil 
" brethren in Kansas, forced to yield obedience to 
" enactments which are not Laws, or be driven from 
" the Territory and murdered by a band of Ruffians 
" acting with the connivance of the Executive of the 
" United States ? Never, Never ; but we will drive 
" back the oppressors, sword in hand ; and so help 
" me God, believing that to be right, I am with them." 
Aye, such was my declaration before the most au- 
gust assemblage which ever convened on this Conti- 
nent, save that which put forth our Declaration of 
Independence ; and for making it, I have been abused 
and slandered, as few men living have had poured 
upon them the wrath and indignation of the Slave 
power. On the floor of Congress, in the Press, and 
from the stump, the vials of their wrath have been let 
loose upon me ; and my language and my 
purpose, have been distorted into every form which 
falsehood and malignity could devise. But I stand 
here to-day, before you my fellow-citizens of the 
great North-West, and in the presence of my God, 
reiterating every word and every sentiment I 
uttered at Philadelphia ; and ready when the 
time shall arrive, which may God in his 
mercy avert, to carry into execution my pur- 
pose, then and now, fearlessly proclaimed. And 
fellow citizens of the North-West, when that ti.ne 
comes — as come it surely will if the African 
Democracy of our country are permitted to triumph 
in the approaching battle for freedom — 1 expect of 
y ju a cordial and united co-operation. [^1^ this appeal, 
l/ie forty thousand freemen who were listening to 
the wrongs of Kansas, sent forth a united shout of 
approval, with the cry ''we are all with them" — we are 
all ready to do battle for the freedom of Kansas". 
"God bless the freemen of Ka7isas" .] 

I thank you fellow-citizens for this endorsement of 
an honest purpose frankly expressed; ar;d now that 
the Slave power know precisely what I did 
say at Philadelphia, in all its length and breadth, let 
them make the most of it; and let our brethren in 
Kansas, take heart, and feel assured, that it is not the 
intention of the Freemen of the United States calm- 
ly to stand by and witness a continuation of their 
wrongs. Like good citizens, we intend in the first 
place, to seek redress through the Ballot-boxes; and 
failing in that, we will then say to a corrupt Gov- 
ernment : — "We respect and will obey the laws; but 
at your peril, dare to enforce upon our brethren of 
Kansas the odious edicts of the Slave Ruffians of 
Missouri, without t#ie color of law, and in violation 
of every principle of the Constitution, and we will 
imitate our fathers of old, and appeal to arms and to 
the God of battles for the vindication of the great 
principle, that no obedience can ever be due to laws in 
the enactment of which the people have not been 
in mediately or remotely, directly or indirectly, re- 
presented". 



It is the duty of every freeman throughout this 
broad land — I care not whether his lot has been cast in 
the North or the South, in the East or in the West — to 
standby the principles of the Constitution, and by all 
the laws passed in conformity with its provisions. 
And in the dischar^fi of that duty, the people of every 
section, are bound to render obedience to the 
Kansas-Nebraska Law, infamous as it has been 
declared to be by nine-tenths of the people of the land, 
because of its deliberate violation of the plighted 
faith of the Southern States, and its incendiary 
attempt to extend the Institution of Slavery into 
the free Territories of the Union by the direct higjsla- 
tion of Congress. I counsel no resistance ^^-rrfiat 
Law. Under the law itself, faithfully administered 
by an honest Executive, Kansas would now have 
been a free and sovereign State of ihis glorious Union; 
because that Law, vile as it is, gives equal rights to 
all, and promises to every inhabitant of th3 Territory, 
the free exercise of the elective franchise. In obedi- 
ence to its provisions, freemen made their homes in 
Kansas; and determined by theirvotes, to make it the 
land of the free, whence the blighting curse of the 
South should forever be excluded, and the free laborer 
of the North bs protected against the coiitaminatrng 
and demoralizing contact of African Slavery. But a 
corrupt ami unscrupulous Executive, in obedience to 
the demands of the Slave-power, bartered away the 
freedom of Kansas for a re-nomination to the Presi- 
dency; and in pursuance of the infamous bargain, 
winked at, and encouraged the Border Ruffians of 
Missouri in violating the Free soil of Kansas, and 
with bowie-knives and rifles, driving her freemen 
from the polls and then electing creatures of their 
own, to accomplish the infamous purpose of making 
her a Slave State. Againtt this treason to the Con- 
stitution — this deliberate violation of a law of the 
land — this conspiracy with the Slave-pow- 
er against the Free North — the people of 
the non-slaveholding States, have arisen in their 
majesty and demanded redress. For this 
great and good, and holy purpose, we are assembled 
here this day ; and at the hazard of being tedious, 
I must now endeavor to demonstrate to you what 
must be the inevitable consequences, now and 
through all future time, if you fail in your duty to 
yourselves, to your countiy, and to posterity, and 
permit the Institution of Slavery to be extended into 
and over the territory of the Union so solemnly de- 
voted to freedom by the great Compromise of our 
fathers made thirty-six years ago. 

I stand not here to war against Slavery as an ab- 
stract question, but against its extension into Terri 
tory now free. You and I might differ in our esti- 1 
mate of Slavery in its bearing upon the condition of I 
the negro, because I hold that the race is far better f 
cared for in their existing bondage South of 36° 30', j 
than they could care for themselves in a state of free- 
dom in the midst of six millions of the white' 
man. I leave that question therefore, to 
others, and to that all-wise Providence whose ways 
are inscrutable to man; and desire to speak of Slavery, 
only in its relations to those who hold the negro in bon- 



I dage, and to its unmitigated curse upon the region 
where it exists. Thank God it is a mere local institu- 
tion, and exclusively under the control of those who 
have inherited this curse from our mother country, and 
against which the colonies from time to time re- 
monstrated; and the existence of which among us, 
in opposition to our feelings and v/ishes, was made 
by Jefferson one of the causes of our rebellion in 
his first draft of the Declaration of Independence. 
We of the North-East, have, by the bless- 
ing of God, rid ourselves of this great evil ; and 
you of the North- West, are indebted to the horror 
with which Jefferson, Washington, Madison, 
Monroe and their fellow patriots of the South, 
looked upon the demoralizing tendency of this 
blighting curse, for the ordinance of 1787, which 
forever exenipted from involuntary servitude all this 
vast region lying North and West of the Ohio. If it 
be not then against Slavery itself, that I wa;;e war 
— if I do not ask of you to interfere with the institu- 
tion where it constitutionally exists, or seek to pre- 
judice you against its existence there ; but on the 
contrary, if in the name of the great Republican 
Party jf the country, I stand here, in defence of our 
brethren of the South against the handf\il of aboli- 
tionists who would interfere with their constitutional 
rights, and seek only, to accomplish what our fathers 
prescribed in the ordinance of 1787 and the Compro- 
mise of 1820, re-enacted by Southern votes in 1841, 
and recognised by the whole country in 1850 — if I 
only war against Slavery-extension as our fathers of 
old guarded against it, because of its demoralizing 
influences upon the white race — surely the South, 
the descendants of those who remonstrated with 
England against this curse in 1760 to '75, and who pro- 
hibited its extension into the Northwestern Territory 
in 1787, and who, in 1820, solemnly covananted that 
it should not be extended North of 36° 30', have no 
just cause of complaint against us lor humbly 
walking in their footsteps. 

Now then, fellow-citizens, our purpose being to 
oppose the extension of the Institution of Slavery 
into the Free Territories of the Union, on the ground 
that it is a curse to every country where it is intro- 
duced, and that it demoralizes the white race among 
whom it exists, and degrades free labor and the free 
laborer to the level of slave-labor and the slave, let 
us examine the testimony of Southern gentlemen of 
unquestionable honor and patriotis^n, in regard to the 
justice of our position and the imperative moral ob- 
ligation under which we are acting. 

To begin then, with the immortal Washington, 
himself. He is said to have bern present at, and partici- 
pated in the meeting of Freeholders of St. George's 
County in Virginia, in July, 1774, who, in their re- 
monstrance against the conduct of the British crown 
in fostering the Slave trade in opposition to the feel- 
ings of the Colonies, used this language : 

" The African trade is injurious to the Colony, 
because it obstructs the population of it by freemen, 
prevents manufacturers and other useful people from 
settling, and occasions an annual increase in the 
balance of trade against this Colony". 



11 



In a letter written by Washington to Robert 
Morris, (see Sparks' Washington,) he says : 

" I can only say, there is not a man living who 
wishes more sincerely than i do, to see a plan 
adopted for the abclition of it (Slavery) but 
there is only one proper and effectual mode in which 
it can be accomplished, and that is by legislative 
authority; and this, so far as my suffrage will go, shall 
never be wanting". 

Again, in his celebrated letter to Sir John Sinclair, 
in relation to investments in the United States, he 
clnims that because Virginia will certainly abolish 
Slavery, investments in her lands will pay as well as 
if made in the free territory of Pennsylvania. He 
says : 

■' There are in Pennsylvania laws for the gradual 
abolition of Slavery, which neither Virginia nor 
Maryland have at present, but which nothing is more 
certain than they n>ust have, and at a period not 
remote". 

James Madison of Virginia, in the Convention 
which framed our Constitution, made it a sine qua 
non that ihe word slave or slavery, should not appear 
in the Constitution; so that when abolished, as he 
looked forward to its being at an early day, the re- 
cord might not be sullied by the admission that such 
a curse had ever existed amongst us. His voice was 
listened to ; and you will look in vain through our 
Constitution for the word " Slave" or " Slavery". 
In Congress in 1789, this great patriot and statesman 
used the folio .ving language : 

" Every addition the States receive to their num- 
ber of slaves tends to weaken and render them less 
capable of self defence. In case of hostilities with 
foreign nations, I hey will be the means of inviting 
attLick instead of repelling invasion. It is a neces- 
sary .luty of the General Government to protect every 
part of their confines against dangers, as well inter- 
nal as external. Everything, therefore, which tends 
to increase danger, though it be a local affair, yet, if 
it involves national expense or s.ifety, becomes of 
concern to evrry part of the Union, and is a proper 
subject for the consideration of those charged with 
the general administration of the Government." 

" I hold i"^ essential in every point of view, 
that the general Government should have 
power to prevent the increase of Slavery". — 
Madison Papers, Vol. III. p. 1391. 

" The augmentation of Slaves weakens the States, 
and such a trade is diabolical in itself, and diser-^ce- 
ful to mankind. As much as I value a union of 
these States, / would not admit the Southern States 
into the Union, unless they agree to a discontinu- 
ance of this iisgraceful trade".- -In Const. Conven- 
tion, 1786. 

Here was a direct appeal to Congress to interfere 
with the local institution of Slavery as it exists in the 
States, because it is dangerous to the national wel- 
fare ! Such language held in the Southern coun- 
try at this day, would find its reward in a hal- 
ter and suspension to the nearest tree, convenient for 
the vindication of the chivalry of that region. And 
yet this is the identical James Madison who is ever 
appealed to as the great expounder of the Constitu- 
tion of which he was the most active franaer. 

Now then, for the sentiments of Thomas Jeffer- 
son, the author of the Declaration of Independence; 
and from time immemorial, the great head of the 
Democracy of the country. You all know that in 



12 



that great protest against the wrongs inflicted 
by the mother country he puts forth the remarkable 
declaration that " all men are created equal ; that 
they are endowed by their Creator with certain inali- 
enable rights ; that among these, are life, liberty, 
and the pursuit of happiness". But this is said 
by the Slaveocracy, to be only " an abstraction" 
— a " rhetorical flourish". Let us, therefore, listen 
to what he said in a letter to John Holmes on the 
20th April, 1820, and leave to the advocates of Slave- 
ry-extension, the task of explaining it away. Mr. 
Jefferson says : 

"The whole commerce between master and slave 
is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous 
passions; the most unremitting despotism on the 
one part, and degrading submissions on the 
other. * * With the morals of the people, their 
industry also is destroyed. Indeed, / tremble for 
my country when I reflect that God is just, and that 
his justice cannot sleep Jorever; that considering 
numbers, nature, and natural means only, a revolu- 
tion ot the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, 
is among possible events: that it may become proba- 
ble by supernatural interference ! The Almighty 

HAS NO ATTRIBUTE WHICH CAN TAKE SIDE WITH US 
IN SUCH A CONTEST." 

****** 

'' I can say with conscious truth that there is not a 
man on earth who would sacrifice more than I would 
to relieve us from this heavy reproach in any practi- 
cable way. The cession of that kind of property, for 
so it is misnamed, is a bagatelle, which would not 
cost me a second thought, if, in that way, a genera! 
emancipation and expatriation could be effected; and 
gradually, and with due sacrifices, I think it might 
be". 

So much for Thomas Jefferson, of Virginia, and 
the great oracle of Democracy by which Henry A. 
Wise and his brother Virginians, have been wont to 
swear. Now listen to the testimony of the Hon. 
George Mason, of the same State; of whom Judge 
Butler, of South Carolina, recently said on the 
floor of the Senate, that "he was one of the wisest 
" one of the most sagacious, and one of the firmest 
" statesmen that Virginia ever bred, or that ever 
'• deliberated in the councils of his time." George 
Mason says : . 

" Slavery discourages arts and manufactures. The 
slaves produce the most pernicious effects on man- 
ners. Every master of slaves is born a petty 
tyrant. They bring thb judgmeivt of Heaven 
UPON A country. As nations cannot be rewarded 
or punished in tho next world, they must be in this. 
By an inevit.ible chain of cau.-ses and effects. Provi- 
dence punishes national sins by national calamities". 

Now, what said HENRY CLAY of Kentucky, 
himself a Slaveholder, as was Washington, and 
Jefferson, and Madison ? 

'•Slavery is a practical war against the rights of 
man". — Letter to Citizens of New Orleans. 

"And now, sir, coming from a Slave State, as I do, 
1 owe it to myself, I owe it to truth, I owe it to the 
subject, to say that no earthly power could induce me 
to vote for a specific measure for the introduction 
of Slavery, where it had not before existed, either 
south or north of the Missouri Compromise line". 
— Speech on the Compromises in the Senate, 1850 

"If slaves are voluntarily carried into such a juris- 
diction [where Slavery does not exist] their chains 
instantly drop off, and they become free, emancipated 
liberated from their bondage." — Ibid. 



And in the same great speech when contending lor 
the binding efficacy of the Missouri Compromise, 
and repudiating the idea of ever suffering Slavery to 
dishonor and contaminate one square foot of land, 
conquered from Mexico and which was free territory, 
he said : 

But if unhapvily, we should be involved in war, 
in a civil war, between the two parts of this Con- 
federacy, in which the efforts upon the one side 
should be to restrain the introduction of Slavery 
into new Territories, and upon the other side to force 
its introduction there, what a spectacle should 
WE present to the astonishment of mankind, in 

AN effort, not to PROPAGATE RIGHTS, BUT — I mUSt 

say, though I trust it will be understood to be said 
with no design to excite feeling — a war to propa- 
gate WRONGS IN THE TERRITORIES THUS ACQUIRED 

from Mexico. It wou'd be a war in which we 
should have no sympathies, no good wishes; in 
which all mankind would be against ms; in which 
our own history itself would be against us; for 
from the commencement of the Revolution down to 
the present time, we have constantly reproached our 
British ancestors for the introduction of Slavery 
into this country. And allow me to say that, in my 
opinion, it is one of the best defences which can be 
made to preserve the institution of Slavery in this 
country, that it was forced upon us against the 
wishes of our ancestors, of our own American Co- 
lonial ancestors, and l)y the cupidity of our British 
commercial ancestors." — [Speech on the Compro- 
mise Acts of 1850. 

Ponder well fellow-citizens upon these dying 
words of the immortal Clay, and ask yourselves 
what would be his position were he now here. No, 
you need not do that. Had he lived — he or any of 
his great co-laborers who formed the Compromise of 
1820 — the pigmy politicians and dirty demagogues 
who repealed that great compact in de'ence of freedom, 
would never have dared lay hands upon it or even 
suggested its repeal. While Clay and Webster 
lived, the mousing politician.^ and their dishonored 
associates in violating the plighted faith of the South, 
skulked from the light of day ; and it was only when 
the grave closed over all who made the great Com- 
promise of 1820, thit they dared to assail it, and by 
its repeal, bring upon the South dishonor, and upon 
the whole land the existing fearful agitation. 

Next to Jefferson and Madison, it may be said 
with truth, that no man exercised a greater influence 
in the councils ot the country, than did William 
PiNCKNEY of Maryland, in 1789. Listen to an extract 
from his letter to the Maryland Legislature in that 
year — himself a slaveholder : 

" Never will your country be productioe, never 
will its agriculture, its commerce, or its manufac- 
tures flourish, so long as they depend on reluctant 
bondmen for their progress. 'Even the very earth,' 
says Montesquieu; 'which teems with profusion un- 
der the cultivating hand of the free born laborer, 
shrinks into barrenness from the contaminating sweat 
of a slave.' This sentiment is not more figuratively 
beautiful than it is just". 

And Marshall, in a speech to the Virginia Legis- 
lature, bears this testimony to the character of Sla- 
very in its effects and influences upon the State 
where it exists. 

" Slavery is ruinous to the whites, retards improve- 
ments, roots out our industrious population, banishes 
the yeomanry of the country, deprives the spinner. 



13 



the weaver, the smith, the shoemaker, the carpenter, 
of employment and support. This evil admits no 
remedy ; it is increasing, and will continue to increase 
until the whole country will be inundated with one 
black wave, covering the whole extent, with a few 
white faces floating on the surface. The master has 
no capital but what is invested in human flesh. The 
father, instead of being richer for his sons, is at 
a loss how to provide for them. There is no diver- 
sity of occupations — no incentive to enterprise. — 
Labor OF every species is disreputable, because 
performed by slaves. Our towns arc stationary, our 
villages everywhere declining, aiid the general as- 
pect of the country marks the curse of a wasteful, 
idle, reckless population, who have no interest in the 
soil and care n.it how much it is impoverished". 

In the Convention held in Virginia for the ratifica- 
tion of the Constitution, Mr. JoH?fsoN spoke as fol- 
lows — evidently looking to an eirly emancipation of 
the yiaves, as did Washington. 

'' They tell us that they see a progressive danger 
of bringing about emancipation. The principle has 
begun since the Revolution. Let us do what we will, 
it will come round. Slavery has been the founda- 
tion of much of that impiety and dissipation which 
h ive been so much disseminated among our country- 
men. If it were totally abolished it would do much 
good". 

Mr. BoLLiNGBROKE, of Buckingham county, Vir- 
ginia, in Convention in 18.32, said : 

"Sir, that it is an evil,a great and appaUing evil, 1 
dare believe no sane man will or can deny. Nor, 
sir, can it be denied, that it deprives us of many of 
those advantages, facilities, and blessings which we 
should enjoy had wc a more dense white population 
That It is A BLIGHTING, WITHERING CURSE 
UPON THIS LAND, is clearly demonstrated by 
this very discussion itself. 

"Notwithstanding Eastern gentlemen have waxed 
so warm, there are many, very many, in Eastern Vir- 
ginia who would rather resign their slaves gratui- 
tously than submit to the ills of Slaveiy ; many who 
would rather turn them loose and leave them behind, 
wiiile they se-^k a happier clime — a land alike a 
stranger to slaves and Slavery". 

Mr. Berry, of Jefferson county, Va., said : 

"Sir, I believe that no cancer on the physical body 
was ever more certain, steady and fatal in its pro- 
gress than is this cancer on the political body of the 
State of Virginia. I admit that we are not to be 
blamed for the origin of this evil among us ; we are 
not to be blamed for its exister.ce now : but we shall 
deserve the severest censure if we do not take mea- 
sures, as soon .is possitile, to remove it". 

And in support of this position of things — in cor 
roboration of the assertion that Slavery is a "blight- 
ing curse", and should never tie extended into terri- 
tory where it does not exist, the Hon. J. C. Faulk- 
ner, of Virginia, a member of the present Congress, 
and Chairman of the Slaveocracy's National Execu- 
tive Committee for the election of James Buchanan 
to the Presidency and the extensio.T of Slavery into 
the free Territories of the Union — held on 
the same occasion, the following emphatic 
language. Compare this, fellow-citizens, with 
his present labors to extend into free territory this 
very institution, in relation to which he so recently 
said — "Must the country languish, droop, die, that 
the Slaveholder may flourish" ? Mr. Faulkner said 
in convention : 

"The idea of a gradual emancipation and removal of 
the slaves from this Commonwealth is coeval with 



the declaration of your independence of the British 
yoke It sprung into existence during the first ses- 
sion of the General Assembly, subsequent to the 
formation of your Republican Government. It was 
proper; there was a fitness of things in the fact that 
so beneficent an object as the plan for the gradual 
extinction of Slavery in this State should have been 
the twin offspring of that mind which gave birth to 
the bill of rights, and to the act for religious freedom. 
A fact so honorable to the public spirit and humanity 
of that age, so worthy of the genius and expanded 
philanthropy of those with whom it originated, can- 
not be too often recurred to, nor too proudly cherished. 
Slavery, it is admitted, is an evil. It is an institution 
which presses heavily against the best interests of 
the State. It banishes free white labor ; 
it exterminates the mechanic, the artisan, the manu- 
facturer; it deprives them of occupation; it deprives 
them of bread; it converts the energy o*' a communi- 
ty into indolence, its power into imbecility, its 
efficiency into weakness. Sir, being thus injurious 
have we not a right to demand its extermination? 
Shall society suffer that the slaveholder may continue 
to gather his crop of human flesh 1 What is his 
mere pecuniary claim compared with the great 
interests of the common weal ? Must the country 
languish, droop, die, that the slaveholder may 
flourish ? Shall all interests be subservient to one — 
a'l rights subordinate to those of the slaveholder? 
Has not the mechanic, have not the middle classses, 
their rights — rights incomnatible with the existence 
of Slavery ?" "• 

And now, one more qjotation and I have done. 
And I intend to bring to the witness stand he, who 
for a quarter of a century, was known as the "North- 
ern man with Southern Principles " — Ex-President 
Martin Van Buren. And so he was, just so long 
as " Southern pnnciples " could be made available 
to his political advancement. They made him Presi- 
dent in 1836; and of course " Southern principles " 
were then his admiration. But in 1844, the South 
did not consider him an available candidate for the 
Presidency ; and because they nominated another for 
tin? Executive Chair, Martin of Kinderhook, all at 
once discovered, that he had a set of " Northern prin- 
ciples" which might be made available. He therefore, 
took the field as a candidate for the Presidency, in 
opposition to his Southern friends; and he and his 
hopeful son, made such solemn asseverations of their 
honesty, that the American people began to think, 
that for once, both father and son were truthful and 
honest. I thought so then, and I think so now ; and 
whatever may have been the inducement for Father 
and Son to repudiate now, all they said in 1848, I 
believe that they were then sincere in their declara- 
tion of attachment to the cause of Free Soil; and, 
consequently, I quote from Martin Van Buren's 
letter accepting the Free Soil nomination for the 
Presidency, the following emphatic paragraphs : 

" In regard to the chief topic of the resolutions, it 
is not to be doubted that the present unprecedented 
movement of the public mind in the non-slaveholding 
States, upon the subject of Slavery, is caused mainly 
by an earnest desire to uphold and enforce the policy 
in regard to it, established by the founders of the Re- 
public. That policy, in addition to the prospective 
prohibition of the foreij;n slave trade, was : 

" Adequate, efficient, and certain security 
AGAINST THE EXTENSION OF SLAVERY 
IN rO TERRITORIES WHERE IT DID NOT 
PRACTICALLY EXIST." 



14 



That no doubt, came from the Heart ; and could 
the truth be known, it is unquestionably, one of the 
few sentiments ever put forth by the "great Magi- 
cian", in which the simple truth was permitted to 
escape him. But alas, like the swine that has been 
washed, he has returned to his wallowing in the 
mire ; and all who love their country, will mourn 
with me, that standing as he does, on the verge of 
the grave, he could not have been gathered to 
his fathprs without this dishonor falling upon 
one who has filled with credit, the most exalted 
station in the world — the Chief-Magistracy of this 
Mighty Republic. As for his hopeful son, who, in 
1848, stood side by side with his venerable father, 
and called down upon himself " a quick and fearful 
damnation", if he ever swerved from the great task 
of resisting the extension of Slavery into Free Terri- 
tory, the last I heard of him, he was standing on this 
spot ten days since, and urging upon the people of 
Indiana, the justice, the policy, and the necessity of 
Slavery extension for the preservation of the Union, 
and the success of the African Democracy ! Verily, 
blood will tell in man as well as animals. True to 
its instincts, the father has become what was a 
stern necessity from his origin; and the son has 
proved himself the natural offspring of the father. 
But their testimony in behalf of our cause in 1848, 
cannot be weakened by their unscrupulous abandon- 
ment of it at this crisis, under circumstances which 
will forever cover them with infamy and render their 
names a byeword and reproach through all future 
time. 

And now fellow-citizens, you have Slavery and its 
inevitable consequences, depicted to you by those 
who were born and lived amid its influences ; and 
most of whom, have been gathered to their rest after 
bequeathing to you their solemn warning against the 
extension of this plague-spot over the free and virgin 
soil of the great West. And how do you like the 
picture ? Is it one which will make you love the in- 
stitution more, now that is proposed to bring it to 
your own doors, and to place the labor of the stolid 
African side by side and on an equality, with the 
free labor of your wives, your sons and your daugh- 
ters ? When the Creator doomed Adam and his race, 
to cultivate the earth, he gave dignity to labor, and 
honored with his choicest blessings from that time 
forth to the present, the honest, free-born, and inde- 
pendent cultivator of the soil. The Almighty Father 
of the Universe, became himself the companion and 
councillor of those who labored upon the earth ; and 
by his signal marks of approbation bestowed upon 
the husbandman, he made him what he now is, and 
will forever continue to be where His Word is 
made th? rule of action— the noblest, the 
purest, and the most honored and respected of 
the human race. Such is man in the free 
cultivation of the soil, without aught created, to 
stand between him and his Maker ; and reverently 
looking up from Nature unto Nature's God. But 
place along side of him the African Bondman — the Ne- 
gro Slave of the African Democracy ! and what 
then? Let Washington, and Jefferson, and Madi- 



son, and Clay, and all the great and wise and 
good men of our country, whi 'lave been born, and 
lived, and died amid the Itis't ition of Slavery — let 
them tell the tale. Let the abj 'ct condition of the 
six millions of non-3laveho1ding whites now in the 
Slave States, w'loaro in every ro«iect worse off than 
the negro —let them answer my question. 

Fellow ci'izens, you cannot possibly conceive the 
condition of the slave region of our country, unless 
you visit it, anl become an eye-witness of the idle- 
ness, wastefulness, ignorance, vice and moral degrada- 
tion, which everywhere pervade a population of nine 
million and a half of human beings who possess im- 
mortal souls and are responsible here and herea'"tpr, 
for their conduct. Of these, three millions are 
Slaves, six millions non-slaveholding Wliites, and 
only three hundred and scvcn'y-fi'>e thousand slave- 
holders, including rmn wimen and children. Of 
this number, only fifty thousand, hold ten slaves and 
upwards; and this mere handful of aristocratic mas- 
ters, hold in slavery the three uiillicns of Africans, 
and in a far more degrading bon I ige, the six millions 
of non-slav;holding whites. Th ^ con iition of these 
whites is far worse than that ol the Negro himself; 
and it is the interest of the slaveholder that it should 
be. They are too poor to hold I md or to work it, 
because th? Institution of Slavery requires broad 
fields and large capital for its existence aid preser- 
vation: and consequently, the white poor man, be- 
comes a laborer alongside of the A*"rican Slave, and 
absolutely degenerates into a more miserab'e and 
dependent class than the Negro himself. This is no 
imaginary picture. There are those here, who 
will bear witness to the truth of what I say; 
and I hold in my hand a letter from 
that venerable Democrat, Francis P. Blair, 
himself a slave-holder, in relation to this all impor- 
tant matter, which should be printed in letters of 
gold, and hung up in every dwelling in the land, 
north of Mason & Dixon's line, and of 
36° 30' North. He shows conclusively, that 
the presence of Slavery, has reduced this large 
class of free whites in the Slave States, to a condi- 
tion far below the slave in morals, habits, and com- 
forts ; and that so thorough is their debasement, that 
the project is now openly discussed of making them 
slaves, in order to e/cpa^e them to the moral conli- 
tion of the Negro! Governor Hammond, of South 
Carolina, said of these non slave-holding whites : — 
"They obtain a precarious subsistence by occasional 
" jobs, by hunting, by fishing, by plundering fields or 
" folds, and too often, by what is in its efiects, far 
" worse — trading with slaves, and inducing them to 
plunder for their benefit". Mr. Fakren, another 
Southern writer, says : — " In the more southern por- 
tion of this region, the non-slaveliolders possess 
generally, but very small means; and the land which 
they possess is almost universally poor, and so sterile 
that a scanty subsistence is all that can be derived 
from its cultivation; and the more fertile soil being 
in the possession of the slave-holder must forever re- 
main out of the possession of those who have none". 

Mr. William Geary of South Carolina, treating 



15 



upon the same subject, says, that "any man who 
'• is an observer of things, could hardly pass through 
" our country without being struck with the fact, 
" that all the capital, enterprise, and intelligence are 
" employed, in directing slave labor ; and the conse 
" quence is, that a large portion of our poor white 
" people are wholly neglected, and are suffered to 
" while away an existence in a state but one step 
" in adoance of the Indian of the forest. It is an 
" evil of vast magnitude, and nothing but a change 
" in public sentiment will eHect its cure". 

Recollect, fellow-citizens, that there are no less than 
six millions of non-slaveholding whites in the South- 
ern country, of whom at least fioe millions are re- 
presented t. jbe snore vicious, more demoralized, and 
less capable of securing the necessary means of exis. 
tence from day to day, than is the negro whose bond- 
age has produced this fearful state of things, — ^and 
all to give political power and social position to three 
hundred and fifty tho isand slave holders of the 
South ! And n )vv that evil has grown to an 
ext nt which induces the Slaveocracy to ap- 
prehend an uprising of 'his down trodden mass of 
white population, what think you is the remedy de- 
vised for their relief? Why simply, to make slaves 
of them! Startle not. I stand here, speaking to 
you great and s. lemn truths, upon which I ask free- 
men to base their action in the coming Presidential 
contest ; and I dare not if I would, say one word or 
utter one sentiment, which I would not reiterate on 
my dying bed. Listen then, to what a leading South- 
ern author says, in his recent work upon "the failure 
of free society". Mr. George Fitzhugh in his book 
printed at Richmond and entitled "Sociology for the 
South in tne Failure of Free Society", holds the fol- 
lowing language : 

"But for Ciiistianity, Free Society viouXA be ^ 
wilder ess ot crime ; and Christianity has not fair 
play and a proper ti'jld of acliaii, vvhire GoViiniinent 
has failed to institute the peace-begettiag and -pro- 
tectioc influence of Domestic Slavery". 

" Make the laboring man the slave of one man, in- 
st ad of the clave of society, and he would be far 
better off." "Two hundred years of liberty have 
made white laboers a pauper banditti. Free so- 
ciety hasfaile 1, and that which is not free must be 
substituted." 

" Say the Abolitionists, ' Man ought not to have 
property in man., What a dn^ary, cold, bleak, in- 
hospital world this would be, with such doctrine car- 
ried into practice!" * * * "Slavery has been 
loo universal not to be necessary to nature, and man 
struggles in vain against nature." * * * "Free 
society is a failure. We slaveholders say, you must 
recur to domestic slavery, the oldest, the best, and 
the most common form of sociaiisin." 

" Free society is a monstrous abortion, and slavery 
the healthy, beautiful, and natural biding which they 
are trying unconsciously to adopt. "The slaves are 
governed far better than the free lali'^rers at the 
North ate governed, uur negroes are not only bet- 
ter oti as to physical comfort tiian free laborers, but 
their moral condition is better." 

" We do not adopt tlie theory that Ham was the 
ancestor to the negro race. The Jewish slaves 
were not negroes; and to confine the justification of 
slavery to that race, would be to weaken its Scrip- 
tural authority, and to lose the whole weight of pro- 
fane authority — for we read of no negro slavery in an- 



cient times." * » * '< Slavery, black or white, 
is right and necessary." 

" Nature has made the weak in mind or body, 
slaves." * * * " The wise and virtuous, the 
brave, the strong in mind and body, are born to com- 
mand." 

"Men are not born entitled to -equal rights. It 
would be far nearer the truth to say, that ' some were 
born with saddles on their backs, and others booted 
and spurred t- 1 ride them — and the riding does them 
good. 'They need the reins, the bit, and the spur.' 
' Life and Liberty are not inalienable.' The Decla- 
ration of Independence is exuberantly false, and 
aborescently fallacious." 

And the doctrines ol this book are supported by the 
great organs of the African Democracy of the Sonth 
— the Richmond h'xaminer and Richmond Enquirer. 
Listen to the Richmond Enquirer : 

" Until recently, the defence of slavery has labored 
under great difficulties, because its apologists — for 
they were merely apologists — took half-way ground. 
They confined the defence of slavery to mere negro 
slavery, thereby giving up the slavery principle, ad- 
mitting other forms of slavery to be wrong; and 
yielding up the authority of the Bi^le, and of the 
history, practices, and experience of mankind. Human 
experience, sliovving the universal success of slave 
society, and the universal failure of free society, 
was unavailing to them, becpuse they were precluded 
from employing it, by admitting Slavery in the ab- 
stract to be wrong. The defence of mere negro 
slavery involved them in still greater difficulty. 2'he 
laws of all the Southern States justified the holding 
of white men in. slavery, provided that through the 
mother they were descended, however remotely, from 
a ne','ro slave. The bright muUatoes, according to 
their theory, were wrongfully held in Slavery. 

" The line of defence, however, is changed now, 
and the North is completely cornered and dumb as an 
oyster. The >iouth now maintains that Slavery is 
right, natural and necessary. It shows that all 
divine, and almost all human, authority, justifies it. 
The South fun her charges, that the little experiment 
of free society in Western Europe has been, from the 
beginning, a cruel failure, and that symptoms of 
fdilure are abundant in our North. While it is far 
more obvious that negroes be slaves than whites — 
for they are only fit to labor, not to direct — yet the 
principle of Slavery is in itself right, a7id does not 
depend on difference of complexion". 

[From the Kichmoad Examiner.] 
"This agitation has produced one happy effect, at 
least— it has compelled us of the South to look into 
the nature and character of this great Institution, and 
to correct many false impressions that even we had 
entertained in relation to it. Many in the South 
once believed that it was a moral and political evil. 
That folly and delusion are gone. We see it now in 
its true light, and regard it as the most safe and sta- 
ble basis for free institutions in the world. It is im- 
possible, with us, i hat the conflict can take place be- 
tween labor and capital, which makes it so difficult 
to establish and maintain free institutions in all 
wealthy and highly civilized nations where such in- 
stitutions as ours do not exist." 

I have thus proved to you fellow-citizens, from South- 
ern testimony, first, that Slavery demoralizes every- 
thing with which it comes in contact ; and secondly, 
that placed along side of Slave labor, the labor of the 
free white man necessarily sinks at once to its level, 
and being unprotecteJ by capital and combination, 
gradually sinks far below the level of negro labor, 
with the loss of social position and the gradual but 
inevitable loss of the means of independence. De- 



16 



prived of education and all moral power, the loss of 
political power necessarily follows ; and ultimately, 
the natural and only remedy is, to make slaves of the 
free white man, whose numbers make tbem dangerous 
to the safety of the aristocratic community in 
which they exist. This is not the work of a single 
generation ; but you have only to read the publica- 
tions of the day, to become satisfied, that this is pre- 
cisely the present position of the Slave States; and 
that their only remedy for the consequences of Slavery 
upon white labor, is ultimately, to make slaves of 
those who are thus unfilled for any other position. 
And with these facts 'lefore you — with the clearest and 
most irrefragable evidei.ce in your possetsion, that 
the presence of Slavery in the free Territories of the 
West, must inevitably reduce the future white labor- 
ers of that region to the abject and degrading condi- 
tion of the five millions of whites at the South — fit 
only to be enslaved, — I submit to you the question, 
whether you will by your votes, or by tamely suffering 
Kansas to become a Slave State, bring this great 
curse upon your descendants — upon our descend- 
ants ? Yes fellow-citizens, our descendants ? 
For with however much of prosperity you or I 
may now be blest, we should be faithless to bur- 
selves and unworthy the education which we have 
enjoyed, if we could not judge of the future by the 
past, and plainly perceive, that our descendants of 
the second, third, and fourth generations, and their 
descendants forever, must, with few exceptions, 
find their homes in this same great western region 
of our continent, and earn their subsistence by the 
sweat of the brow. We are in fact, but trustees tor 
them ; and the question is now distinctly presented 
to us, whether we will faithfully execute our trust 
and preserve for free labor and for our descendarfts 
forever, free, and happy, and respectable homes in this 
great region — homes such as you now pos-V 
sess, surrounded by the blessings of Civil 
and Religious Liberty, under institutions of 
which you constitute the basis and which are 
moulded at your pleasure — or whether you 
will admit the blighting curse of Slavery there, and 
make it and its fearful consequences, the inherit- 
ance of your children ? Dare you do this ? Is there 
a man among you, who recognizing his obligations 
as a Christian, and his duty to those who won for us 
our liberties, and gave us freedom and a free and 
generous soil to till in all the majesty of freemen 
standing erect before their God — is there one of you, 
I ask, who, in remembrance of what he has inher- 
ited, and his duty to transmit that inheritance unim- 
paired to his posterity — is there a solitary voter in 
this vast assemblage, who is capable of reflecting 
upon the past and the future, and yet in repudiation 
oC_all his obligations both io God and man, will dare 
to go to the polls on the 4th of November and cast 
his ballot for the ticket of the African Democracy 
and the extension of African Slavery into Territory 
now free ? 

I leave this question to be answered by your con- 
sciences now, and by your votes on the day of elec- 
tion. I have said that we are joint trustees of this 



great inheritance ; but there is this marked diffe- 
rence between you of the West nnd we of the East. 
You are the acting parties in ihe trust. Our duty is 
the same ; but you are here on the spot, to enforce 
the provisions of the great trust confided to us; and 
we who are cis'nnt from the scenn. are only called 
upon to lend our aid when you shall find it necessa- 
ry for your success. On you, therefore, more especi- 
ally, has devolved the great task of now and forever 
excluding Slavery from this great region so solemnly 
devoted to freedom in 1820; and .if you fail in your 
duty, or if we fail in backing you in the fearle.^s 
discharge of it, God preserve us from the execration 
of Freemen throughout the world and from the curses 
of the unborn millions of our own loins, whom 
we shall thus have doomed to a slavery, which in its 
tendencies, destroys alike the soul and the body of its 
victims. Already the Slaveocracy see at hand the 
hour of their triumph and of our degradation ; and in 
the exultation of anticipated victory, one of their 
leading organs impudently exclaims : 

" Free Society ! We sicken of the name. What 
is it hut a conglomeration of greasy mechanics, fil'.hy 
operatives, small-fisted farmers, and moonstruck 
theorists ? All the northern, and especially the New 
England States, are devoid of society fitted for a 
well-bred gentleman. The prevailing class one meets 
with, is that of mechanics struggling to be genteel, 
and small farmers who do their own drudgery ; and 
yet who are hwdly fit for association with a South- 
ern gentleman's body servant. This )<? your free 
50cie<j/ which the Northern hordes are endeavoring 
to extend into Kansas". 

Fellow-Citizens, you were told from this stand a 
few days ago, and will be told again, that there was 
no wrong committed by the repeal of the Missouri 
Compromise, because it was unconstitutional. Now, 
if it were true, that that compromise was uncon- 
stitutional, it would in no wise lessen the ex- 
tent of the wrong done, or relieve the perpetra- 
tors of that infamous act, from one iota of 
the deep damnation which they have so justly invo- 
ked from every honest and honorable man throughout 
the civilized world, who has heard of that Robber 
act. Constitutional or not, it was a compact to which 
honorable men pledged themselves and their de- 
scendants forever. It existed unviolated for tliirty- 
four years; and then, when the South had reaped all 
the benefits which it could coiier, and the Nortn 
was about to partake of what had so solemnly been 
promised them, behold that very South vio'ated their 
plighted faith and the plighted faith of their fathers. 
As a question of morals only, there is deep disgrace 
and abiding dishonor, now and through all time, in 
that most iniquitous repeal of an honorary arrange- 
ment. 

But as regards the constitutionality of the 
Compromise of 1820. How was the Constitution 
itself formed ? In what had it its origin, if 
not in Compromise ? Our fathers then, as 
their descendants now, abominated Slavery and its 
attendant curses; but foreseeing the great blessings 
inseparable from Union, they sacrificed their hostility 
to the impudent and arrogant demands of the South 
in relation to Slavery being represented in Congress, 



17 



and compromised the whole difficulty, by stipulating 
that the African Slave trade should cease in 1808, and 
providing that instead of each Slave being counted in 
the basis of representation, three-fifths only, of their 
number, should be estimated. Here then, we have the 
example of compromise in the very formation of the 
Constitution itself. And what was almost the very 
first act of the first session of the first Congress, that 
assembled under that Constitution ? Why, the ordi- 
nance of 1787, drawn by Jefferson himself, 
solemnly covenanting that Slavery and involuntary 
servitude, be excluded forever, from the very spot 
upon which we are now assembled, and from 
the whole of this glorious region lying north and 
West of the Ohio River! And in favor of this great 
Compromise — this noble tribute to freedom, every 
Member of the Senate and House of Representatives 
belonging to the South, gave their vote of approba- 
tion. Was that Ordinance unconstitutional ? Has 
any Demagogue, either of the North or the South, 
ever ventured to declare the Ordinance of 1787, an 
unconstitutional act ? And yet, wherein does it dif- 
fer from the act of 1820 ? The one, admitted to be 
Constitutional, excluded Slavery forever, from all 
this region of country lying North and We it of the 
Ohio ; and the other, denounced as wwconstitutional, 
in like manner excluded Slavery forever, from all the 
Territory of the confederacy lying North of 36° 30' 
of North Latitude. The language and the purpose, 
are precisely the same in both enactments; and 
no greater absurdity was ever devised, that the 
miserable plea of the dishonored and degraded trick- 
steis, who voted to rob freedom of her share of the 
great Compromise of 1820, by pretending to consider 
the measure unconstitutional. Unconstitutional ! 
Why, was it not entered into to preserve the Constitu- 
tion itself? and but for its enactment, there is good 
reason to believe that there would have been no 
Constitution, and no Union to be preserved by these 
great Compromises, made in 1787 and re-enacted in 
1820; — made first at the adoption of the Constitution, 
then in the ordinance of 1787, then again, in the 
great Missouri Compromise of 1820 ; and re-enacted 
by a united Southern and Slave vote in the admission 
of Texas into the Union in 1845. Constitutional al- 
ways, when its object was to benefit and extend the 
institution of Slavery; and w/i-Constitutional only, 
when by such a miserable plea, freedom can be robbed 
of its just rights, and the free soil of the 
Union be sacrificed to the blighting curse of Slavery 
and the moral degradation it brings in its train. 
But not content \vith declaring the Compromise of 
1820, and even the Constitution itself, unconstitu- 
tional, we find an Ex-President of the United States, 
Millard Fillmore, himself a candidate for the Ex- 
ecutive chair, deliberately declaring, that if a Consti- 
tutional majority of all the people of the United 
States, shall presume to give their votes for John C. 
Fremont, instead of James Buchanan or his precious 
self, it will be good and justifiable cause for the 
South to secede from the Ur.ion ; and that in such 
contingency, they should secede, and thus break up 
and scatter to the winds of Heaven, every vestage of 



that great work of our revolutionary sires, which has 
been alike the boast and admiration of the lovers of 
freedom in both Hemispheres. Aye, a candidate for 
the Presidency dares to preach this treason against 
the Union — against freedom — against civil and Rehgi- 
ous Liberty throughout the world ! — for once destroy 
this noble Union — this great Republic conse- 
crated to freedom by the blood of Patriots — 
and where on tho face of the habitable globe, is man 
to look for that liberty of speech and of the Press, 
which we have been taught to consider our chief in 
heritance from the Heroes who achieved our Indepen 
dence, and which we are assembled this day to guard 
and perpetuate. But he is not alone in his treason. 
True, he is the first Northern man who has ever 
dared preach treason to the Union ; but he knew there 
were black-hearted traitors at the South who have 
heretofore threatened the union of the States ; and 
he foolishly hoped to win their votes by adopting 
their principles. They however, openly proclaim, 
that while they love the treason, they v-ery cordially 
despise tlie traitor ; and although the cry of Disunion 
has been eagerly seized upon by those who lost 
all of character they had in their repudiation of 
Southern faith and Southern honor by the 
repeal of the Missouri Compromise, it brings 
with it no hope for the Northern traitor 
who " set this ball in motion". It is resorted to by 
the weak and reckless madmen of the Slaveocracy, 
for the same purpose that nursery maids tell ghost- 
stories to children ; and with very much the same 
success. These ghost stories of the nursery, lose all 
their horrors by the lapse of years and a too frequent 
repetition; and so it is with the stale and senseless, 
and yet wicked and treasonable cry of disunion. It 
is too disgusting to merit serious argument ; and 
those who put forth this foolish and absurd threat 
against the integrity of the Union, would be very 
unhappy if they did not know that the Free North 
and West, will never ^ermif this glorious work of 
our Patriot fathers, to be destroyed, but will whip into 
submission— aye, whip into the most prompt and ab- 
ject submission — any and every section of the country 
which dares to raise the standard of REBELLION. 
I say they know this, and would be unhappy if they 
did not feel it to be true ; because Union with us, is 
the very breath of their nostrils — their one only source 
of safety from the million of slaves they hold in 
bondage, and in relation to whom, Jefferson said — 
" I tremble fcr my country when I reflect that God is 
" just", and that " a revolution in the ivheel offor- 
" tune — an exchange of situation, is among possible 
" events." They can't exist without our protection ; 
and we have simply to point to the Constitution and 
enforce its provisions upon the refractory. As well 
might a child in its nurse's arms, attempt to resist 
the will of its Parents, as the South bully about seces- 
sion in opposition to the wishes and the consent of the 
North. And so, too, with the East and North-East. 
We are, thank God, all dependent one upon the other ; 
and a dissolution of the Union is simply an impos- 
sibility. Look at the position of this great North- 
west. In less than half a century, three-fourths of 



18 



the whole population of the United States, will be 
concentrated here ; and does any sane man believe, 
that for selfish purposes of their own, the South or 
the East, may withdraw frotn this Union and set up 
for Ihsmselves, and thus cut off from the Atlantic, 
the whole West and North-West of this great 
continent? Why the bare idea of such a 
proceeding, is an absurdity ; and he who advances 
It, has given prima facie evidence that he is 
fully qualified to become the inmate of an In- 
sane Asylum. Neither the South, nor the East, 
nor the West, possess either the right or the physi- 
cal ability, to destroy this glorious Union ; and the 
sooner a hempen cord is affixed to the neck of the 
arch traitors who thus threaten the integrity of the 
Union, the better it will be for our whole country. 
The treason is not the less worthy of punishment 
because at the very head of those who thus dare to 
threaten Disunion, stands Ex-President Fillmore, 
of New York, a candidate for the Presidency, and 
John U. Breckenridge of Kentucky, the candidate 
of the African Democracy for the Vice Presidency. 
General Jackson would have hung Calhoun in 1832 
if Henry Clay had not saved him by his compro- 
mise bill ; and quite as certainly as yonder sun now 
shines alike upon the just and the unjust, so 
certain is it, that if John C. Fremont should be 
elected to the Presidency, the very first overt act of 
treason which these windy Traitor.s now only threat- 
en, will be met with a Traitor's doom. I care not 
from what quarter the treason comes. Be it from an 
hixPresiderit at the North, or from the gaseous Bul- 
lies of the South, or the Drunken Border Ruffians of 
the West, — let one or all of them, venture upon the 
Experiment of actual treason to the Union, and a 
Traitor's doom is as certamly in store for them as I 
am now addressing you, if John C. Fremont should 
be elected to the Presidency. We invite the issue ; and 
in the name of the law-abiding, and Union-loving 
people of the Free States, we dare them to put their 
threats in execution. But barking dogs rarely bite; 
and with Fremont in the Executive Chair, the silly 
fools who talk of disunion, and seek to frighten men 
with the weapons of children, will shrink into the 
insignificance from which alone, accident and crime, 
have enabled them to emerge into a bad notoriety. 

But who is John C. Fremont ? \_Ninc cheers for 
Fremont.'] Fellow-citizens, I have already said, 
that in this great contest for freedom — this great 
struggle for constitutional liberty, and the freedom 
of the white race, and tor the preservation of the free 
soil of our country from the blighting curse of slavery 
— men are as nothing; and therefore, I have purposely 
abstained from the slightest allusion to our candi- 
date for the Presidency. I am a poor eulogist ; and 
but for the calls for "something about Fremont and 
his Romanism", which are constantly reaching my 
ears from the vicinity of the stand, I should not have 
alluded to him at all. For me it would be quite 
suHicient to know, that he is a gentleman of intelli- 
gence and a man of honor ; and that he was select- 
ed to be our standard-bearer, because he is pledged if 
elected, to carry out our principles ; and because the 



history of his life, has clearly demonstrated, that he 
possesses the necessary courage and firmness, fear- 
lessly to discharge all his duties, to enforce 
the Laws, and to hang the traitors— large 
or small — who may venture upon an attempt 
to dismember the Union. But I am happy 
to be able to add, and I speak from a knowledge of 
the man, that he is not only thus fully qualified to 
be our standard-bearer in this great contest, but that 
he is pre-eminently the man for the times; and pecu- 
liarly fitted to fill the Executive chair in such man- 
ner as will insure to our country peace and prosperity 
at home, and command for our Institutions the re- 
spect and consideration of the Nations of the Earth. 
His talents are conceded, even by his enemies; atid 
his contributions to science, his explorations in the 
unknown regions of our vast continent; his great and 
untiring energy, his inexhaustible resources in the 
presence of difficulties which would have appalled 
the stoutest hearts, and his indomitable per- 
severance, have won for him the universal admi- 
ration of Europe and America, exhibited in every 
form which it is usual for Governments and Peoples 
to bear testimony to extraordinary merit. His 
name is as familiar in the halls of Science and the 
saloons of Fashion, in the Old World, as it has been 
in our own Capital at Washington; where, until he 
became the chosen leader of the Freemen of our 
country, to vindicate the cause of Freedom and of 
Free Soil, all men of all parties, vied with each 
other in seeking to do him honor; because in so 
doing, they honored themselves, by coupling their 
names with one who had identified himself with the 
exploration, the development, and the conquest of a 
vast Empire on the Pacific coast. 

Such, fellow-citizens, is the public character of 
your candidate for the Presidency — one who, although 
l)orn and educated in a Slave State, made California 
free; and who has been selected as your standard-bearer 
because he agrees with you in regard to the demoraliz- 
ing tendency of the institution of Slavery, and is unal- 
terably resolved, to resist by all constitutional means, 
its extension into Territory now free. He is now 
forty three years of age ; and more than half his life 
has been spent in the service of his country. And 
yet, where is the man — be he friend or foe — who up 
to the recent period when Colonel Fremont was 
selected to be your candidate for the Presidency 
ever heard a whisper against his public or private cha- 
racter ? I appeal with confidence to every man with- 
in the sound of my voice, and I know that there are 
hundreds of his political opponents present — I appeal 
with confidence to each and all of you — whether un- 
til the gallant Pathfinder became our candidate for 
the Presidency, you ever heard a whisper against 
his integrity, or the slightest suspicion against the 
unsullied purity of his public and private character- 
And yet, because he did not shrink from the responsi- 
bility of becoming your leader — he, who never in his 
life, avoided responsibility of any kind — behold him 
charged with every crime and every vice, which be- 
long to the most worthless and most debased of our 
species. And all this, within the last ten months ! 



19 



He who less than a year ago, was admitted by every 
Press in America, to be a man of high honor and 
unsullied reputation — a man of science, a gentleman, 
and a ripe scholar; and above all, one Oi the most 
daring and adventurous explorers of the age, and a 
gallant soldier who had conquered for us a vast 
empire and devoted it to freedom forever — is now held 
up to the astonished gaze of his countrymen and the 
world, as a knave and a cheat, a coward and 
a braggart, an ignorant fool, and a miserable im- 
postor! And not content with this, his domestic 
privacy has been invaded, the memory of his mother 
has been assailed, the character of his parents been 
traduced, the movements of his wife been tracked, and 
her purposes and objects misrepresented ; — and in 
short, bis Religion made the pretext for the vilest 
assaults upon his honor and honesty. 

To all this he has made no response, except in 
reply to questions asked with honest motives ; but 
has simply pointed to his past life and public services, 
and defied the malice of his enemies to lay their finger 
upon a solitary act of his life, which will not bear 
the most rigid scrutiny. He has left the entire field 
to his enemies, and permitted them to do their 
worst ; and when they had done all that malice could 
invent, or falsehood, backed by perjury, could 
manufacture against him, the people of Iowa, Ver- 
mont and Maine, gave .1 verdict of acquittal in such 
emphatic terms, that its reverberation from the hills 
of New England was heard and felt in every hamlet 
throughout the land. That verdict you of the North- 
tvest, will be called upon to endorse on the 4th of 
November next ; and oh, if you Icve your country 
and its institutions — if you would preserve to your 
children and their descendants, the blessings of free- 
labor upon free soil — falter not at that, the most im- 
portant election that has ever occured in the history 
of the world. 

A Voice*' What of Fremont's Romanism 1" 
Fellow-citizens, I feel humbled in being called upon 
to reply to such a question. The charge is beneath 
contempt, as are the miserable barking curs with 
whom it originated. But even if it were as true as 
it is notoriously false, and known to he false by the 
vilest of the vile calumniaiors who have manfactured 
to order, almost every charge which has been cir- 
culated against our candidate, and prostituted their 
Press and their manhood, by spying into the move- 
ments and assailing the ladies of Col. Fremont's 
family — if I say, it were true instead of being as it is, 
a downwright wilful and malicious falsehood — it 
would not affect my course one iota. I hold that 
every man's Religion, is a matter solely between him 
and his God ; and that the public have nothing to do 
with it. But all mankind do not so think; and there- 
fore, immediately upon the appearance of this charge 
in that vilest of all vile presses which ever disgraced 
this or any other country, I went to the residence of 
Col Fremont, and there, in the presence of his Jes- 
sie, I received the free and explicit contradiction 
which appeared in the columns of the Courier and 
Enquirer on the following day. [Did you see Jessie 1 
What is she like 7 Three cheers for Jessie."} 



I thank you in Jessie's name. I did see Jessie ; 
and I saw her too, the evening before I left home to 
meet you here. She is like — just like a pure, lovely 
and intellectual woman who loves her husband and 
glories in his fame ; and whose every feeling of 
gratitude, has been awakened by the noble 
enthusiasm which the American people have 
evinced in his defence. She is all over a 
woman — a beautiful, lovely and confiding wo- 
man ; with the rarest intellectual qualities culti- 
vated as her father's daughter was certain to have 
them cultivated and developed. But clever as she is, 
she still is all woman ; and would rather see her hus- 
band's fame vindicated Irum the assaults of his cal 
uminators and their associate curs, than see him 
President. She defied her father's wrath to be the 
Pathfinder's wife ; and she would.rather to-day, give 
his and her traducers full permission to continue their 
Hyena assaults upon her and his family, and freely 
abandon every aspiration for the occupancy of the 
White House, than that one honest man in this 
widely extended country, should entertain a doubt of 
the high honor and unimpeachable integrity of him 
whose great qualities she was the first to discover and 
reward. Such is Jessie. She is fitted for the most 
exalted station; and she has proved herself equally 
qualified for the most humble. That was a noble 
response of hers, when appealed to by the ladies of 
California to urge her husband to permit California 
to become a Slave State, as the only means of pre- 
venting her and them, from being compelled to do the 
work of the kitchen, " No, never ", was her reply. 
" I was born and have lived all my life in a Slave 
State, and it is far better that we should do our work 
for a few years or forever, than that Slavery should 
be established here". And she actually went into 
her kitchen and labored for months, like an honest 
true-hearted woman, as she is, urging all the while, 
her gallant husband to persevere in his determination 
to make California a Free State. He did persevere, 
and success crowned his efforts ; for then his word 
was law with the great majority of the People of 
California. I honor him for his noble stand in behalf 
of freedom, and I honor Jessie for her being true to 
him, to herself, and to her sex, in that hour of trial ; 
and God willing, I hope to tell her so in the White 
House on the 4th of March next. [The speaker 
was here interrupted with loud and continued cheers 
for Jessie and her Pathfinder.} 

But to my interview upon the subject of Colonel 
Fremont's religion. I was assured that his mother 
was a Protestant Episcopalian, and that he was bap- 
tized and educated in that religion; that after he had 
arrived at years of discretion, he was confirmed by 
the Bishop of South Carolina, and ihat he had never 
for a moment fahered in his religious faith; that Mrs. 
Fremont was also an Episcopalian, and that their 
children had all been baptized in that faith, — he on 
one occasion having been the God-father and taken 
upon himself the vows required of him; and finally, 
that he ever has been, and is now, a Protestant Epis- 
copalian, and never for an instant, has entertained 
the idea of abandoning his religion; and 



20 



has never even witnessed the performance 
of a Religious ceremony in a Romish church 
more than half a dozen times in his life ! 

Which of you could say more than this in relation 
to your Protestantism? and when charged with 
Romanism, and enquired of, whether the charge be 
true, what could any of you say or do, more than 
Col. Fremont has done whenever appealed to upon 
the subject ? A.id yet the worthless curs who ori- 
ginated this falsehood, have kept up their barking at 
that same hole ! And each and every of the slanders 
against Col. Fremont and his family, all of which 
have their origm in the same contaminated source, 
are as utterly groundless as is this story of his Ro- 
manism. No doubt the same manufacturers of 
falsehoods and the same assailants of the ladies of 
Col. Fremont's family, will continue their vocation 
between this and the day of election ; but these 
wretched vipers have been deprived of their fangs, 
and even the feelings of the parlies traduced, can no 
longer be injured by anything originating in such a 
stew of corruption. 

Fellow-citizens, I thank you for the patience with 
which you have listened to this long talk — speech I 
did not intend it to be ; and I have only one more re- 
quest to make of you. Before you retire to-night, 
just take a look at the maps representing the Slave 
and free territory in the United States, which I am glad 
to see every where exhibited ; and mark how com- 
pletely the surrender of Kansas to Slavery, would be 
giving up Utah, New Mexico, and ultimately, 
California itseU, to the same blighting curse. 
Western Kansas runs to the Rocky Mountains and 
joins Utah ; and give Kdusas to Slavery, and the 
gale for freedom and freemen, to pass into New Mex- 
ico, is closed forever. But preserve Kansas to free- 
dom, as she was so solemnly declared to be forever 
devoted in 1820, and Texas and Missouri, will con- 



tinue hereafter, the extreme limit to which Slavery 
can go West and South; and when Mexico falls into 
the Union, as she must and will, at some future day, 
freedom and free labor, will claim her as their own. 
All, everything therefore, depends upon the preserva- 
tion of Kansas to freedom, and adherence to the 
Compromise of 1820. Abandon that great 
gate to the South and West, to Slavery, 
and you not only give up the whole North- 
west to the incubus of Slave-labor, but you 
abandon at once and forever, Ulah, Neio Mexico, 
California, and Mexico herself, when she comes to 
us, to the tender mercies of the Slaveocracy. 

Are you prepared for such a contingency ? Men 
of Indiana, and you of Illinois and Wisconsin, can 
you — will you, by a neglect of the most solemn duty 
which freemen were ever called upon to discharge, 
become parties to so great a crime against the fu- 
ture of this vast continent ! I hope not, and I trust 
not. Remember that the Institution of Slavery is of 
man, and has its origin in his vices and his crimes ; 
while Freedom is the child of Heaven, and was 
the great Boon of God to man, whom he crea- 
ted after his own image, and but little lower 
than the angels, and gave " him dominion 
" over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, 
"and over the cattle, and over all the Earth, and 
" over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the 
" Earth", but not over the limbs and thews and 
sinews of his fellow man. Be faithful then, to your 
selves, to your posterity, to your Country and to your 
God on the 4th of November next. And let your 
watch Aford be Freedom, Liberty, Union. Freedom 
and Liberty, one and inseparable, now and for- 
ever ; and Union — everlasting Union among the 
States — for our own benefit and for the benefit of 
mankind, and for the! preservation of Freedom and 
Liberty. 



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